Re: New Emacs features via Google Summer of Code (or other similar stipend schemes)

[Andrea Corallo <acorallo@gnu.org>]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>> Eli, have you considered using GSC to get volunteers for implementing
>>> some moderately difficult Emacs features? Since GSC provides financial
>>> incentive, it may be possible to get student volunteers.
>>> 
>>> Of course, someone still needs to mentor the students, but that's less
>>> effort compared to actually writing all the code.
>
>> I can only say that it would be harder for a casual contributor to do
>> a GSoC-style job for Emacs than for other projects, because Emacs has
>> a lot of specialized needs and requirements that take time to learn.
>> But maybe this is not an obstacle.
>
> May you elaborate?
> The interested students will likely also be at least casual Emacs users.
> So, some degree of familiarity is expected.
> Other than that, how is Emacs dramatically different from working with
> any other large codebase?
>
>> People, including the other co-maintainers, are welcome to pursue
>> this, but I personally have no free time or resources to do that.
>
> Adding Stefan and Andrea to CC.
>
> To add more details, FSF/GNU qualifies as a valid mentor organization
> for GSoC. Org mode project even participated in it in the past:
> https://orgmode.org/worg/archive/gsoc2012/orgmode-gsoc2012-ideas.html
> AFAIR, there was a request from GNU this spring to submit proposals.
>
> So, what I am talking about is not a theoretical idea. It can be done.
>
> What is needed is a formulation of projects/features that are desired.
> Mentors do not have to be maintainers. Experienced Emacs contributors
> can be the mentors (also, mentoring a student can be a good addition to
> some types of CVs).

I think I could propose something related improving the native compiler
why not.

But I'm no expert of the GSoC, what is the typical deadline?

Also, a source of topics to work on could be our TODO, it's really full
of interesting things that needs man power (ex the paragraph "Emacs as
word processor").

Thanks

  Andrea