[OpenIndiana-New-developers] GSoC Application for Open Indianna

[Albert Lee]

Hi Jonathan,

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 12:23 PM, Jonathan Tan <januaryjon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I have been looking around the OI mailing list and IRC for a while now,
> looking for places where I hope to be able to contribute.
> After looking at the list
> in http://www.illumos.org/projects/illumos-gate/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code,
> I am interested in the few projects, mainly Improved Installation and IPS
> enhancements, all of which are supposed to be handled by DeanoC. I'm really
> interested in the installation and IPS because it's one of the more
> promising feature that I feel really needs improvement since the days I
> started using OpenSolaris few years back.
> I am also very interested in the ZFS encryption project, although the "hard"
> difficulty is making me think twice. Also, I've never worked on a filesystem
> project before, other than school lab where we had write a simple C code to
> read from a raw FAT partition.
> May I ask what exactly is the "medium" or "hard" difficulty, what is
> involved? It would also be great if someone can explain what needs to be
> done for the 3 projects.

"Hard" projects basically assume previous work in a related area and
probably a larger time commitment. You have to be at least have a good
understanding of the issues in any case.

ZFS crypto and its current situation is fairly well documented. For
more open-ended enhancements it's your job to do the research on
current issues and what features you want to include in your proposal.
(Now, "research" can include asking developers questions, but you need
have something more specific).

> I have some experience in C programming, but have never really programmed in
> python before. Also, are those projects still open, or someone else has
> already taken it up?
> Finally, should I be asking this here or in the oi-dev mailing list? Pardon
> me if I got it wrong.
>

Nothing is "taken" until the application deadline on the 8th, when
accepted projects are decided. If we have too many applicants with the
same project idea we may suggest alternatives.

OI-related questions may be addressed to oi-dev. The illumos developer
list is where most of the GSoC communications happen, so you should
subscribe to it.

-Albert