> > 2) Add support for more SATA/AHCI controlers; I have: > > FWIW, GSoC projects that amount to ``add some drivers for my non-linux > OS!'' have historically been unpopular, unfinished, and generally > unloved projects (perhaps barring last year, when I didn't really pay > attention). I recommend against making them a significant part of > your GSoC proposal; I might go so far as to recommend against adding > them at all.
i don't believe i heard that as a specific complaint at the mentors summit. perhaps i wasn't listening to the right people. what i did hear is that many projects suffered from overambition. students (like all software developers) consistently underestimate the scope of work and overestimate the rate at which they can get it done. also underestimated was the time required to get a development environment up-and-running. for drivers, there are often these two additional problems. students and mentors alike underestimate the difficultiy of learning multiprogramming. and porting a driver is generally much harder than writing a new one from the documentation because it's hard to tell why a driver casts the runes it does without (you guessed it) the documentation. assuming these concerns are addressed, i think mentoring a driver project could be fun. for example, there are a number of 10/100 chipsets that have good documentation that's under 100 pages. complete with (oh, my) a theory of operation. that could be an intersting project if a dev environment were easy to set up. a basic smb driver could also fun to do and within the scope of work for a summer. - erik
