Merge branch 'master' into external_pager_mechanism

Conflicts:
	microkernel/mach/external_pager_mechanism.mdwn

1 files changed, 38 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/perl_python.mdwn b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/perl_python.mdwn
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..34e877ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/perl_python.mdwn
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
+
+[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled
+[[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[!meta title="Improving Perl or Python Support"]]
+
+Perl and Python are available on the Hurd, but there are quite a lot of test suite
+failures. These could be caused by problems in the system-specific
+implementation bits of Perl/Python, and/or shortcomings in the actual system
+functionality which Perl/Python depends on.
+
+The student applying for this project can pick either Perl or Python,
+whichever he is more comfortable with.
+(Perl is higher priority though; and there are more failures too.)
+
+The goal then is to fix all of the problems with the chosen language if possible, or at
+least some of them. Some issues might require digging quite deep into Hurd
+internals, while others are probably easy to fix.
+
+Note that while some Perl/Python knowledge is probably necessary to understand what
+the test suite failures are about, the actual work necessary to fix these
+issues is mostly C programming -- in the implementation of Perl/Python and/or the
+Hurd.
+
+Possible mentors: Samuel Thibault (youpi)
+
+Exercise: Take a stab at one of the testsuite failures,
+and write a minimal testcase exposing the underlying problem.
+Actually fixing it would be a bonus of course --
+but as it's hard to predict which issues will be easy and which will be tricky,
+we will already be satisfied if the student makes a good effort.
+(We hope to see some discussion of the problems in this case though :-) )