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diff --git a/community/gsoc/2008.mdwn b/community/gsoc/2008.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c282b5e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/community/gsoc/2008.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009 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]]."]]"""]] + +The GNU Hurd project has successfully participated in the +[Google Summer of Code 2008](http://code.google.com/soc/2008/hurd/about.html)! + +All in all we had five students working on a diverse selection of five projects +from our [[ideas_list|gsoc/project_ideas]], and the students as well as the mentors +did a great job! + +# Projects + +* [[Sergiu_Ivanov|scolobb]] worked on **namespace-based translator selection**. + Although he wasn't an official (sponsored) GSoC student, he worked on his + project quite as steady as the other students (except for a two week + vacation). The project however was hampered by various misunderstandings, + wrong assumptions, and several major redesigns during the course of the work + -- which is probably more our fault than the student's. In the end, though, he + completed nsmux (the main namespace proxy handling the magic filename + lookups, running dynamic translators on demand); he still works on + finishing the translator stack filtering necessary to implement some of the + desired functionality (accessing files while skipping existing translators). + +* [[Zheng_Da|zhengda]] worked on **network virtualization** and some related topics. In + spite of many open design question in the beginning, he did a lot of good + work -- finishing not only the ethernet multiplexer and filter translators, + which form the core of his project, but also a glibc patch to allow + overriding the standard socket servers with environment variables; the + devnode translator and a pfinet patch to allow accessing network devices + through device files; support for setting the network device in promiscuous + mode in gnumach; a pfinet patch to use BPF for the packet filtering instead + of the old Mach packet filters, and also to set a proper filter rule that + really only passes the required packages to pfinet; a patch for the subhurd + boot program to allow giving arbitrary virtual devices to the subhurd; and a + proxy for the proc server, which allows running unmodified programs with a + pseudo device master port instead of the real one -- providing some of the + subhurd functionality without having to start a complete new system instance. + He is still working on fixing some remaining issues, and on allowing subhurds + to be run by normal users. + +* [[Flavio_Cruz|flaviocruz]] was working on **Lisp bindings for the Hurd interfaces**, + and did a great job: Not only did he implement bindings for all low-level + interfaces as well as higher-level libraries for easy creation of translators + and other hurdish programs, but also a whole bunch of sample + translators based on these bindings, some of them quite useful on their own + account. He also fixed a few bugs in the Hurd he found along the way. + Presently he is doing some further improvements, like additional abstractions + and more sample translators. + +* [Andrei Barbu](http://0xab.com) was working on + **porting a kernel instrumentation framework** like dtrace or SystemTap. He + implemented the necessary kernel infrastructure (and some nice general + improvements along the way), making it possible to create tracing programs by + hand; however, only at the end of the summer he realized that SystemTap is + really extremely Linux-specific (while dtrace was ruled out already at the + setout because of licensing problems), so there is no nice frontend yet. + Unfortunately he was not able to continue work beyond the official deadline + because of his PhD. + +* [[Madhusudan.C.S|madhusudancs]] was working on a **new procfs implementation**, to + allow running existing programs based on Linux procfs out of the box. He + managed to implement all the necessary information bits, so the most + important procfs programs now work; and also fixed the procps program suite + to actually build on the Hurd. There are still some major bugs left, though. + Aside from fixing the remaining bugs, he now works on adding some more + information bits that are nontrivial to implement, and on fixing libgtop to + work for us as well. + + +# IRC meetings + +Since the selection of the students on we have had regular GSoC IRC meetings, +every Friday 19:00 UTC. + +Minutes from some of the meetings: [[2008/minutes-2008-04-25]], +[[2008/minutes-2008-05-02]], [[2008/minutes-2008-05-16]] + +We decided to keep up the meetings after the end of official GSoC, so things +can be properly wrapped up for upstream submission; but also because the +students want to continue discussing progress with their ongoing work, +problems, future directions etc. + +I also think that regular IRC meetings are a good thing in general. + +As always, the meetings are not only for (former) GSoC students and mentors, +but open to any interested party :-) + +If someone of you is lurking around here and would like to contribute, +but feel that you could do so better under formal mentoring: Please +speak up at the meeting! :-) |