Hello, Google is accepting organization applications for the next Summer of Code [1] and as usual GNU is going to apply for it. Let's start thinking about a list of ideas for the next Summer of Code and potential mentors.
I plan to propose the following project:
Modularize Automake to improve the test-suite performance Currently automake is implemented as a monolithic Perl script with some modules for code shared with aclocal which is another script distributed with Automake. To ensure its practical correctness Automake provides a huge test-suite and requires every non-trivial bug-fix to be covered by an additional non-regression test. Unfortunately this whole test-suite is quite slow to run (~20-30 min) which makes it hard for maintainers to effectively use it, and is long enough to refrain users to run it. The main reason for this slowness is that almost all tests are integration/validation tests that touch the file system. A more effective approach would be to replace those with unit tests when possible. The objective of this project is to incrementally refactor the current implementation by decomposing it into modules and unit test those with [1]Test::More. Skills: Good understanding of the different testing strategies, Basic knowledge of Perl Mentor: Mathieu Lirzin References 1. https://perldoc.perl.org/Test/More.html
Comments and suggestions welcome. If you want to propose another project that you are willing to mentor, feel free to share your ideas on this list too. The deadline for submitting a project is the beginning of March. [1] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ -- Mathieu Lirzin GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761 070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37
