[oi-dev] [developer] GSoC? Decision time....

Thu Feb 27 19:29:30 UTC 2014

Yes, this is a good GSoC project.  I’m happy to mentor a student, modulo my concerns about working with remote students.  (I don’t want to mentor students from India, China, etc. because in my experience I have not been successful in supporting them effectively.  I’m much more likely to be happy working with a student who can ideally meet me in person at least once or twice in the term, or at least one in a timezone that makes it possible for reasonable collaboration to occur.  Again, this is just *my* preference as a mentor — I see nothing wrong with other mentors wanting to work with remote students if they feel they can give such students sufficient support; I just know I’ve not been successful in doing so the last few years.)

The successful student should have some experience with one or more of SCSI, SATA, device drivers, file systems.  A student without background in *any* of those will not be very likely to succeed in this project in the time allotted for GSoC, IMO.

-- 
Garrett D'Amore
Sent with Airmail

On February 27, 2014 at 11:06:22 AM, Adam Števko (adam.stevko at gmail.com) wrote:

Hi,

another possible project for GSoC could be adding TRIM support in illumos. According to my information, only some sd driver modifications  are needed.
SSDs are becoming  more widespread and illumos is the only OS which does not have proper TRIM support I know about.

Is this a suitable task for GSoC? I suppose there are many engineers on the list with needed expertise, who could mentor a student.

Cheers,
Adam

On Feb 15, 2014, at 1:35 PM, ken mays <maybird1776 at yahoo.com> wrote:

Hello,

Note: OI is nothing more than a 'server OS' distribution with additional software. Leave it at that.

OI surely can mentor students as there are 'students' that already work on that project.

As for illumos, I note that there 'should be' a general focus on projects that a group of students can
 work on for the summer or accomplish in the 3-month span.

Porting device drivers is such a task. Many 'experts' here on kernel and device driver programming.

I'd like to see students work on USB 3.1/Thunderbolt 2 drivers for illumos. A few storage partners
use illumos and supporting device drivers related to storage makes sense - not so much graphic drivers. 

That brings into focus the reality of how illumos is being used on the 'bigger scale' of things. The
illumos kernel developers that can mentor students based on projects they may work on internally
and can hopefully lead that work into future jobs for the student or a great job reference.

As for OI GSoC, a project like 'Implement the 2013Q3 Intel Graphics Stack' is a great project which involves
upstream's Xnv implementation.

Note: I'd donate high-end graphic cards/workstations to students accomplishing those goals.

Sincerely,
Ken Mays

On Friday, February 14, 2014 2:53 PM, Garrett D'Amore <garrett at damore.org> wrote:
Lets all agree that we don’t want any simple efforts to just package software as part of GSoC, whether for any distribution.

Let’s also agree that if some very compelling project (forward and innovative thinking, not just making illumos try to compete with Linux on Linux’s terms) for Desktop technology comes up, we can evaluate such a project on its merits, and consider it as a candidate for GSoC slots.

Let’s also agree that opinions of folks not actively volunteering to mentor really don’t count for much here.   Its the time on the part of the mentors and admin, and Google’s money at stake.  Unless a project poses a risk to the “reputation” for illumos, it shouldn’t matter to other parties.

Thanks.

-- 
Garrett D'Amore
Sent with Airmail

On February 14, 2014 at 9:19:35 AM, Keith Wesolowski (keith.wesolowski at joyent.com) wrote:
On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 04:20:43PM +0000, Alasdair Lumsden wrote: 

> However there are plenty of people who do want to run it on the desktop, and who are you to tell them they should not do this? 

I'm not telling people what to work on, since they're not employed by 
me. I'm trying to make sure that the illumos community represents 
itself favourably and accurately to the wider world, especially when 
trying to recruit young engineers to work on our operating system. 

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