Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hello,

GNU is applying as an organization for Google Summer of Code 2017.  So
this is time to start gathering ideas for possible Guix/Shepherd related
projects.

I have created a page based on the one from last year:

  https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix/GSoC-2017

It's a Wiki, so feel free to contribute to it.

TIA.

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761  070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:

> GNU is applying as an organization for Google Summer of Code 2017.  So
> this is time to start gathering ideas for possible Guix/Shepherd related
> projects.
>
> I have created a page based on the one from last year:
>
>   https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix/GSoC-2017
>
> It's a Wiki, so feel free to contribute to it.

Excellent, thanks for setting it up.

Students, mentors, and hackers: please discuss your ideas on this list
and add them to the wiki page!

Ludo’.

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Mathieu Lirzin writes:

> Hello,
>
> GNU is applying as an organization for Google Summer of Code 2017.  So
> this is time to start gathering ideas for possible Guix/Shepherd related
> projects.
>
> I have created a page based on the one from last year:
>
>   https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix/GSoC-2017
>
> It's a Wiki, so feel free to contribute to it.
>
> TIA.

One interesting change from when this was defined last year and this
year is that the "extensible event loop" one has some candidates to pick
from, via guile a-sync, fibers, and 8sync.

However using any of those would require Shepherd being pinned to Guile
2.2.  Maybe not a problem; it could be a branch, and Guile 2.2 stable
looks not so far away.

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[David Craven]

> Students, mentors, and hackers: please discuss your ideas on this list
> and add them to the wiki page!

RISCV port.

I've made a lot of progress on the bootloader stuff. I'll be posting patches
for commenting soon.

I have a riscv toolchain up and running and it boots the riscv-linux. I rewrote
the linux-libre package for riscv-linux - Mark was completely right - it's total
BS :)

That is if you'll have me as a GSoC student :)

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

Sorry, I just came by to this topic, and I'm somewhat interested in the
context of the phrase "Mark was completely right - it's total BS".

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[David Craven]

> "Mark was completely right - it's total BS".

Well I did some work on running guixsd on arm, part of which involved
trying to make the linux-libre package more extensible. Mark
criticized it as not being very well thought out, and I found that it
was not very extensible.

Coming from a background in functional programming I decided that it
made sense to have a function -> package to create variants. But as it
turns out Ludo already has created a great way of extending packages
through records with (inherit). The function -> package thing doesn't
work very well.

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[David Craven]

> Note: I don't know if you are talking about Linux-libre in the context
> of the package definition for Guix

Oh, I'm talking about the package definition - not linux-libre itself.

RISCV is a computer architecture like ARM or x86_64. RISCV has simply
not upstreamed their patches yet and has nothing to do with
linux-libre or not libre. But for the time being no one has produced a
RISCV SoC yet that requires binary blobs to work, so compiling
riscv-linux after running the deblobbing script is at the moment is
probably bit-wise identical and applying the patches to linux-libre is
a trivial matter.

Sorry if my wording was confusing.

Thank you,
David

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[Ludovic Courtès]

David Craven <david@craven.ch> skribis:

>> Students, mentors, and hackers: please discuss your ideas on this list
>> and add them to the wiki page!
>
> RISCV port.

Why not, please add it to the wiki page!

> I've made a lot of progress on the bootloader stuff. I'll be posting patches
> for commenting soon.
>
> I have a riscv toolchain up and running and it boots the riscv-linux. I rewrote
> the linux-libre package for riscv-linux - Mark was completely right - it's total
> BS :)
>
> That is if you'll have me as a GSoC student :)

If you’re eligible, that sounds like a good idea.

Ludo’.

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[Ludovic Courtès]

Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:

> One interesting change from when this was defined last year and this
> year is that the "extensible event loop" one has some candidates to pick
> from, via guile a-sync, fibers, and 8sync.
>
> However using any of those would require Shepherd being pinned to Guile
> 2.2.  Maybe not a problem; it could be a branch, and Guile 2.2 stable
> looks not so far away.

Yes, I think it’d be reasonable to have Shepherd rely on 2.2.

In fact, we should start moving all of our infrastructure to 2.2.  There
are still a couple of issues to be addressed I think, but now’s the time
to explore.

Ludo’.

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[ng0]

On 17-02-14 10:10:55, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:
> 
> > One interesting change from when this was defined last year and this
> > year is that the "extensible event loop" one has some candidates to pick
> > from, via guile a-sync, fibers, and 8sync.
> >
> > However using any of those would require Shepherd being pinned to Guile
> > 2.2.  Maybe not a problem; it could be a branch, and Guile 2.2 stable
> > looks not so far away.
> 
> Yes, I think it’d be reasonable to have Shepherd rely on 2.2.
> 
> In fact, we should start moving all of our infrastructure to 2.2.  There
> are still a couple of issues to be addressed I think, but now’s the time
> to explore.
> 
> Ludo’.
> 

Could that be a project as well, to move the guile parts to 2.2 or is
this too lowkey and too little for GSoC?
-- 
ng0 -- https://www.inventati.org/patternsinthechaos/

Re: Ideas for Summer of Code 2017

[Ludovic Courtès]

ng0 <contact.ng0@cryptolab.net> skribis:

> On 17-02-14 10:10:55, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:
>> 
>> > One interesting change from when this was defined last year and this
>> > year is that the "extensible event loop" one has some candidates to pick
>> > from, via guile a-sync, fibers, and 8sync.
>> >
>> > However using any of those would require Shepherd being pinned to Guile
>> > 2.2.  Maybe not a problem; it could be a branch, and Guile 2.2 stable
>> > looks not so far away.
>> 
>> Yes, I think it’d be reasonable to have Shepherd rely on 2.2.
>> 
>> In fact, we should start moving all of our infrastructure to 2.2.  There
>> are still a couple of issues to be addressed I think, but now’s the time
>> to explore.
>> 
>> Ludo’.
>> 
>
> Could that be a project as well, to move the guile parts to 2.2 or is
> this too lowkey and too little for GSoC?

Ideally, there won’t be much to do to switch to 2.2.  :-)

Guix itself builds with 2.2, albeit slowly at the moment.  We’d need to
routinely use 2.1 to see if there other issues.

Of all the dependencies of Guix, I think only Guile-SSH needs “porting”
to 2.2, but even that should not be too much work.

So it’s mostly about ironing things out and making sure we can
transition smoothly enough, rather than a development project of its
own.

Ludo’.