Re: GSoC task init system for Debian GNU/Hurd?

[Justus Winter <4winter@informatik.uni-hamburg.de>]

Hi :)

Quoting Thomas Schwinge (2013-04-07 23:53:37)
> IRC, OFTC, #debian-hurd, 2013-03-19:
> 
>     <tschwinge> Do we have any suitable GSoC tasks for Debian GNU/Hurd?
>     <youpi> ah well, there are the debian ifup/ifdown and rc.d
>       integrations
>     <pinotree> sysvinit, you mean, or just rc.d?
>     <tschwinge> Oh right, the init system, that might be a suitable task.
>     <youpi> sysvinit
> 
> Do we agree that's a sensible task.  Just have to make sure the student
> doesn't get the idea of directly going for systemd,
> <http://darnassus.sceen.net/~hurd-web/open_issues/systemd/>.  ;-)
> 
> Who can mentor and/or add the task to
> <http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2013/Projects>?

So this ended up in the wiki as 'Debian GNU/Hurd Debianish
initialization' right?

I'd like to apply for this task. I've used both Linux and Hurd based
Debian systems for quite some time and I'm reasonably familiar with
low level aspects of the system initialization on both systems. Back
in the day when the d-i was not yet ported to run on Hurd, I created
this live cd with a custom text based installer.

The live cd part was inspired by the superunprivileged.org cd (I just
noticed that this domain is gone, that's a shame, I always thought
that this was the coolest hostname ever). I learned a lot from this
experience and I was amazed how pluggable and powerful the Hurds
architecture is.

I do consider myself fluent in sh and c even though nowadays I try to
stay away from those languages. But I'm not afraid to get my hands
dirty if the need arises.

I'm involved in the notmuch project and trying to be a nice upstream
project I made sure that notmuch builds on the Hurd. I have two
Debian/Hurd installations (no real hardware atm :( ) and haven't lost
one for quite some time (the recent hurd-libs hiccup was fun and made
me wish for a set statically compiled settrans &co).

I also like the idea of getting more involved in the Debian
project. I've been a happy user, occasionally filed a bug or helped to
resolve issues. I'm also familiar with packaging of Debian packages,
but I've never contributed directly to Debian.

Well, what do you think? What do I have to do now? I already have a
google account, I believe the next step would be to login to google
melange and officially apply, right?

Cheers,
Justus