Re: GSoC project idea: non-recursive automake project

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Pippijn,

* Pippijn van Steenhoven wrote on Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 10:47:35AM CET:
> On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 10:38:39AM +0100, Pippijn van Steenhoven wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 05:26:58PM -0700, Harlan Stenn wrote:
> > > If there was a student interested in showing how "easy" it was to use
> > > automake to do non-recursive Makefiles for a project, I'd be willing to
> > > co-mentor and work with them to convert NTP to that sort of operation.
> > 
> > It's mostly trivial. How hard are GSoC projects supposed to be?
> 
> Being a student, I'd be willing to prove it ;)

If you would like to apply as student for this GSoC project, can you
please formulate a project proposal (as is needed for a GSoC application
anyway) and post it here?  Please take into account what else was said
in this thread about having enough work for a SoC term.  (We can help
with more ideas about how one could extend Automake if that's unclear.)

Harlan's description of the task will soon appear in the archives of
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/summer-of-code/2011-03/threads.html
and eventually also on
http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/ideas-2011.html
but it is still fairly vague.

Then, I remember reading you on this list before, but not yet much in a
development role.  I have no idea whether you know the autotools code or
NTP well.  Now, I don't want to put you on the spot, and prior
development experience is not a requirement for GSoC applications, but
if your proposal is going to encompass hacking on NTP and/or Autotools,
it would help to see or be able to judge your coding and working
together skills in some way or other.

You could help us with something like looking at the debbugs for
Automake and working on some bug (or even just outlining strategies to
do so); or addressing an issue that somebody reported on the mailing
list; or enhancing the documentation in some way; or similar for NTP.
There's no need for you to find out everything (or even much) yourself.
In fact, if you ask questions on the way, that will probably make things
easier for us.  If you don't see something feasible to do, we can
probably also come up with a small (maybe 1-2 hr) task.

Finally, I should add that I'm off-list for the second half of this week
(starting Wednesday; but I should be back sometime next weekend) and
otherwise usually read mails twice a day, so expect some latency.

Thanks,
Ralf