Re: Google Summer of Code 2009: Debian's Shortlist
On Fri, 10 Apr 2009, Obey Arthur Liu wrote:
> === "Debian's Shortlist": ===
> =============================
My own shortlist of projects out of those that you have retained is the
following:
> - Port back update-manager to Debian and all Derivatives
> - Debbugs Web UI: Amancay Strikes Back
> - Automatic Debug Packages Creation and Handling
Those 3 projects are IMO important improvements that we definitely
need.
> - Debian Autobuilding Infrastructure Rewrite
> - Debian-Installer Support for GNU/kFreeBSD
> - MTD Embedded Onboard flash Partitioning and Installation
> - Aptitude Package Management History Tracking
Those 4 are very nice to have and I would like to see them completed.
> - Control Files Parsing/Editing Library/Qt4-Debconf Qt4-Perl bindings
> - KDE/Qt4 Adept 3.0 Package Manager
> - Large Scientific Dataset Package Management
> - MIPS N32 ABI Port
> - On-demand Cloud Computing with Amazon EC2 and Eucalyptus Integration
I don't care very much about those. The last one might be interesting
though.
> * Automatic Debug Packages Creation and Handling *
> --------------------------------------------------
> Student: Emilio Pozuelo Monfort, Mentor: Marc Brockschmidt
>
> This proposal aims at providing debug binary packages for the packages
> in the Debian archive in an automatic manner, moving them away from the
> official Debian archive to an special one. This has the benefits of
> providing thousands of debug packages without any work needed from the
> developers, for all the architectures, without bloating
> the archive.
I thought that Marc was not able to mentor this one. Did he change his
mind ?
> * Debbugs Web UI: Amancay Strikes Back *
> ----------------------------------------
> Student: Diego Escalante Urrelo, Mentor: Margarita Manterola
>
> The Amancay project aims to be a new read/write web frontend to
> Debian's BTS; allowing DDs and contributors to easily interact with bugs
> via an intuitive yet powerful interface, enabling new workflows and
> creating new contribution opportunities like triaging while upholding
> reporting quality.
IMO it's important to have some web UI but we already had a project for
this IIRC and it was not very successful. It would be interesting to know
how the approach followed this year will differ from last time so that we
have some good results this time.
> * Debian-Installer Support for GNU/kFreeBSD *
> ---------------------------------------------
> Student: Luca Favatella, Mentor: Aurelien Jarno
>
> GNU/kFreeBSD is currently using a hacked version of the FreeBSD
> installer combined with crosshurd as its own installer. While this works
> more or less correctly for standard installations (read: the exact same
> installation as in the documentation), it does not allow any changes in
> the installation process except the hard disk partitioning. This project
> is about porting debian-installer on GNU/kFreeBSD, and to a bigger
> extent, make debian-installer less Linux dependant.
I imagine that this will be a big work. My fear is that it would make it
even more difficult to maintain d-i. Also given the individuals in the d-i
team, one should pay attention to involve the d-i teams in the design
quite early on.
> * On-demand Cloud Computing with Amazon EC2 and Eucalyptus Integration *
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Student: David Wendt Jr, Mentor: (probably) Steffen Moeller *see below*
>
> In many academic fields, as well as commercial industries, people
> use clusters to distribute tasks among multiple machines. Many times
> this is done by packaging a whole operating system disk image, uploading
> it onto the cluster, and having the cluster run it in a VM. This project
> intends to make it easier for Debian to distribute prepared disk images
> templates like they distribute CD images now, for the users to recreate
> or customise these templates with Debian packages and for administrators
> to host such clusters with Debian.
I wonder what the challenges are… or is it simply about an UI that wraps
deboostrap and some loop-mounting of filesystem images ?
> * Port back update-manager to Debian and all Derivatives *
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Student: Stephan Peijnik, Mentor: Michael Vogt
>
> The project would involve taking the distribution-(Ubuntu-)specific
> update-manager code, analyzing it, and creating a package with just its
> core functionality, decoupling the distribution-specific parts and thus
> making the core code extensible by distribution-specific add-ons. This
> in turn would remove the need of porting update-manager to Debian with
> every upstream release. An additional optional goal would be replacing
> the synaptics-backend with a python-apt based one.
It would also be particularly interesting to try to write the code
corresponding to the lenny upgrade notes so that we can make use of the
distribution upgrade feature for novice users that don't read the release
notes.
> * Debian Autobuilding Infrastructure Rewrite *
> ----------------------------------------------
> Student: Philipp Kern, Mentor: Luk Claes
>
> Rewrite the software that currently runs the Debian autobuilding
> infrastructure in a way that makes it more maintainable and robust. It
> will use Python as its programming language and PostgreSQL for the
> database backend. By harmonizing buildds, many build failures can be
> prevented and wasteful workload on buildd volunteers can be reduced.
What parts are concerned and how will it work out with Roger Leigh ?
Will he be involved or not ?
I remember that among the rules the student should work alone on the
code, he should not have external help so that the result can be judged as
being his work. Would it be problematic in this case ?
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Contribuez à Debian et gagnez un cahier de l'admin Debian Lenny :
http://www.ouaza.com/wp/2009/03/02/contribuer-a-debian-gagner-un-livre/
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