= Google Summer of Code 2015 = {{{ #!comment #!div style="clear:left; display:block; width:100%; margin:0; padding:0;" Unfortunately, we have not been accepted for GSoC 2015. However, any contributions and enhancement proposals are welcome! Please see [http://guide.macports.org/#development the guide] and subscribe to the MailingLists! }}} {{{ #!comment #!div style="clear:left; display:block; width:100%; margin:0; padding:0;" We have been accepted for GSoC 2015. Further contributions and enhancement proposals are welcome! Please see [http://guide.macports.org/#development the guide] and subscribe to the MailingLists! }}} {{{ #!comment #!div style="clear:both; display:block; width: 75%; margin:0 auto; background-color: lightyellow; border: 2pt solid; font-weight:bold; text-align: center; font-size:120%;" MacPorts has applied for Google Summer Of Code 2015! \\ Stay tuned! }}} {{{ #!comment #!div style="clear:both; display:block; width: 75%; margin:0 auto; background-color: lightgreen; border: 2pt solid; font-weight:bold; text-align: center; font-size:120%;" We are accepting applications! Apply for Google Summer Of Code 2015 now! [[BR]] Deadline is 21 March at 19:00 UTC [[BR]] [http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org2/google/gsoc2015/macports MacPorts at the GSoC website] }}} {{{ #!comment #!div style="clear:both; display:block; width: 75%; margin:0 auto; background-color: lightyellow; border: 1px solid; text-align: center; font-size:120%;" The application period is over. We are rating and deciding which proposals to accept and will start into GSoC soon! }}} [[PageOutline]] This is the MacPorts Project’s page for [http://code.google.com/soc/ Google Summer of Code]. {{{ #!div style="margin: 5px auto; text-align: center;" [[Image(https://www.neverpanic.de/documents/GoogleSummer_2015logo_avatar.png, 350, link=https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2015, title=Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License)]] }}} Information about the past years can be found at SummerOfCodeArchive. == Applications for GSoC == Mentoring organizations can submit organization applications from '''9 February at 19:00 UTC''' until '''20 February at 19:00 UTC'''. The list of accepted organizations will be published '''20 February 19:00 UTC'''. Students will be able to apply from '''20 March 19:00 UTC until 16 March 19:00 UTC'''. If you're interested in working with MacPorts for Google Summer of Code 2015, you don't have to wait until the application period for students starts. Introduce yourself on the [MailingLists macports-dev mailing list] today or drop by in IRC by joining #macports on [http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml Freenode]. See [#contact Ways to Contact Us] for more information. === General info === For future reference you may check the [https://www.google-melange.com/ Google Summer of Code website]. The [http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCStudentGuide/ GSoC Student Guide] is also worth reading and explains what GSoC is about and how it works in detail. We suggest you take a few minutes and read this guide. For the official schedule and deadlines, consult the [http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2015 timeline]. === For the MacPorts Project === We are eager to support and mentor students who want to gain experience by working on the MacPorts Project. We have many ideas for potential internship subjects, yet we are open to anything that is both interesting and relevant to MacPorts. If you have an idea of your own, feel free to [#contact contact us] to discuss it. MacPorts is written in the Tcl scripting language with some low-level parts implemented in C. Most students that have previously applied and successfully completed Google Summer of Code with us did not know Tcl when they applied. Feel free to apply if you don't know Tcl yet, especially if you're willing to learn and already know several scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, PHP or Perl. The best way to apply is to first make contact with us, either by sending a mail to the mailing list, to potential mentors listed below, or to IRC member on #macports on [http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml Freenode]. See also [#contact Ways to Contact Us] for in-depth information on how to reach us. ==== What we expect from students for their applications ==== - Write your own abstract and proposal, copying text from this idea page is not enough. - Show us that you fully understand your task and know what you want to do over the summer. - At best, include a short weekly roadmap covering how you would work on the task. - Please use our [SummerOfCodeApplicationTemplate application template]. ==== What you should do before handing in an application ==== - Get familiar with the MacPorts Project resources. Especially [GetMacPortsSource check out the code] and [https://guide.macports.org read the guide]. - Read the [http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/tutorial/tcltutorial.html Tcl Tutorial]. - Subscribe to the [MailingLists mailing list] [http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macports-dev macports-dev] if you do not already read it. Don't be too shy to post. - '''[#contact Get in contact!]''' Most important is to discuss your ideas with potential mentors via private email, the MacPorts development list, or the IRC channel before applying. == Mentors == The following committers have agreed to be mentors for GSoC 2015 (append `@macports.org` for email) ||= Name =||= Email =||= Area =|| ||= Jeremy Lavergne =|| snc || Administrator, Backup Mentor || ||= Clemens Lang =|| cal || Backup Administrator || ||= Michael Dickens =|| michaelld || Mentor || ||= Bradley Giesbrecht =|| pixilla || Mentor || == Tasks == This is a list of some potential tasks that student GSoC members could undertake. These are just ideas, and while they express our current concerns, we are open to blue-sky projects related to MacPorts. Please note that this list is absolutely '''not exclusive'''! If you have any idea about what you want to see improved in MacPorts, you are free to propose this as your own project. In any case, we recommend you talk to mentors before writing your application. === Core tasks === ==== Dependency calculation using SAT solving ==== #dependencies This task consists of implementing a new dependency engine for MacPorts. The current dependency engine works for everyday use, but it could be extended to support a number of features we would like to have, such as dependencies on variants (ticket:126), versioned dependencies, pre-computing a plan of action (and asking the user for confirmation), conflict resolution proposals and metapackages. Note that we don't expect you to accomplish all of these ideas in one GSoC – setting the base would already be a huge help. This task requires understanding the dependency relations (required for fetching, building, configuring; static and dynamic linking; dependence at runtime). Instead of re-inventing the wheel it might be helpful to use software available to solve the problem of dependency calculation, e.g. by implementing an interface to a [http://www.mancoosi.org/cudf/ Common Upgradeability Description Format]-based SAT solver. Such a solver could generate an execution plan we could propose to the user and finally execute when confirmed. For this task, the MacPorts concept of variants needs to be transformed into a representation the SAT solvers will be able to optimize. If time permits, rolling back on failed updates can also be implemented. There is also a [browser:trunk/dports/devel/libCUDF/Portfile libCUDF] port that might be helpful to look at. * Difficulty: Challenging * Languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: cal ==== Phase out dependency on Xcode ==== #xcode MacPorts currently requires a full Xcode installation, even though a lot of ports will install just fine with the Command Line Tools package only. Since we also have a number of ports that need Xcode to build, we cannot completely remove the Xcode dependency. Your task would be to provide a way for maintainers to easily identify ports that depend on Xcode and mark them as such, so MacPorts can warn users without Xcode installed that a port they want to install needs the full Xcode package. To achieve this, you can modify "trace mode", a `DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`-based sandbox to track whether a port has accessed files belonging to the Xcode package. If it does, your modifications should cause a warning to be printed suggesting the port maintainers to add `use_xcode yes` to the Portfile (unless of course, it is already there). You should also implement an error message if a user without Xcode installed tries to install a port that has `use_xcode yes` set. * Difficulty: Medium * Languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: cal ==== MacPorts port for self-management ==== #self-management The MacPorts port should be the source for updating a user’s MacPorts installation. Currently the MacPorts port is used to build the .dmg installer for MacPorts that is used for the initial installation of MacPorts, and port uses the “selfupdate” mechanism for maintaining the MacPorts installation. The selfupdate mechanism is (at least not documented as such) not accessible through the MacPorts API and does not use the MacPorts mechanisms for maintaining ports. * Difficulty: Challenging * Languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: TBD ==== Generating Portfiles ==== There are multiple tasks related to the generation of Portfiles. Some of these may not be enough work for a full summer project, so they could be combined for proposals freely when the applying student wants to. ===== Perl modules integration from CPAN ===== #cpan2port There has been [[browser:contrib/cpan2port|an attempt]] to write a script for automatic generation of Portfiles from CPAN. This would simplify the maintenance of Perl modules in MacPorts. Revive this project and finish the script or rewrite it. Resources: * http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/perl/g-cpan.xml * http://search.cpan.org/~bingos/CPANPLUS-0.9001/bin/cpan2dist * http://packages.debian.org/stable/dh-make-perl * Difficulty: Easy to medium * Languages: Perl, probably Tcl * Potential mentors: pixilla ===== Read packages from other various package managers ===== #foo2port As above with the pip2port proposal, except with other package managers, such as [http://opam.ocamlpro.com/ opam] for ocaml packages, [http://www.haskell.org/cabal/ cabal] for haskell, [http://luarocks.org/ luarocks] for lua, [https://npmjs.org/ npm] for node.js, and so on. * Classification: Medium * Languages: Tcl, C, OCaml, Haskell, Lua, Node.js, etc. * Potential mentors: pixilla ===== Generate Portfiles with auto-detection of build toolchain ===== #portfile-gen To ease creation of new ports, the helper script [http://trac.macports.org/browser/contrib/portfile-gen/portfile-gen portfile-gen] is able to generated a Portfile stub by taking the name, version and possible a port group as input. This should be extended to handle more things automatically. Lots of options in a Portfile need to be figured out by the maintainer, although they could be extracted automatically from the source. With just a URL to the tarball of a software, portfile-gen can usually automatically extract the name and the version from the filename. Furthermore, the master_sites and distfiles can be derived from the URL, with special handling for sites like sourceforge/gnu/github/etc. However, it should also be possible to specify this later and start portfile-gen with a pre-downloaded tarball. The checksums for the distfiles can be generated after fetching the tarball (portfile authors should be warned to verify these with upstream!) and even more information can be collected when extracting the tarball. Different build systems usually have a unique way to be detected. For example, if a `configure.ac` or `configure.in` exists, but no `configure`, we need to run autoconf. If there is also a `Makefile.am`, but no `Makefile.in` this is using automake and we should better use `autoreconf` instead. If there is a `CMakeLists.txt`, we should include the cmake port group. If there is just a Makefile, but no `configure`, chances are high we can skip the configure phase with `use_configure no`. There are a lot more of such heuristics similar the examples above. This tasks includes implementing a framework where more of these indicators and the resulting actions can be added. The goal of this task is to create an easy-to-use Portfile generator that derives the basic information of a Portfile automatically. This should lower the amount of lines to be written by Portfile authors and lower the barrier for writing the first Portfile. If this is implemented with Tcl modules in mind, this could probably even go into base as a `port new` or `port create` command. * Classification: Medium * Languages: Tcl * Potential mentors: raimue, pixilla ==== Speed up trace mode ==== #tracemode Trace mode is a library preloading-based sandbox used to hide files that a port does not depend on or that are not part of a standard system's installation (such as `/usr/local`). This can avoid problems due to incompatible user-installed software and avoid "automagic" dependencies and increase the reproducibility of builds. Unfortunately, enabling trace mode adds a significant performance penalty to the build process. However, the trace mode code can certainly be optimized using appropriate cache data structures, such as a modified [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie Trie]. Your task would be to identify the performance bottle necks, draft appropriate caching data structures and implement them. * Difficulty: Medium to Easy * Programming languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: cal ==== Improve startupitem code ==== #startupitem MacPorts has the ability to automatically generate startup items for the current platform. For OS X, these are plist files for launchd which will be installed as `/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.*.plist`. The current code would need a little care and could make use of options which have been added in recent releases of launchd. Features that could be useful include (but are not limited to): - Not using daemondo if the daemon works fine under launchd without it - Ability to install multiple plists - Support for LaunchAgents as well as LaunchDaemons - Installing plists in ~/Library for non-root installs if the user wants - only modify specific XML tags to avoid clobbering additions by user - Support startupitems in standalone binary packages (currently a brutal hack is used to include daemondo in such packages, see https://trac.macports.org/ticket/43648) * Difficulty: Easy * Languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: larryv, pixilla ==== Parallel execution ==== #parallel When an action will run targets on multiple ports, run them in parallel when possible and sensible (requires tracking dependencies between both targets and ports and figuring out the maximum reasonable parallelism, e.g. several ports can fetch at once on a fast connection but you only want one 'make -j8' at a time). * Difficulty: Challenging * Languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: TBD ==== Migrate muniversal into base (lipo merging) ==== #muniversal Integrate the [[source:trunk/dports/_resources/port1.0/group/muniversal-1.0.tcl|muniversal portgroup]] into base. Not just a direct copy-and-paste, but in a way that makes sense and preserves the way portfiles are expected to behave (which the current portgroup doesn't). * Difficulty: Medium * Languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: TBD ==== Improve fetching from version control ==== #fetchtypes Make cvs/svn/git/hg/bzr fetch types checkout into the distfiles dir and then export into the work dir, to [[ticket:16373|avoid having to re-fetch]] after cleaning the work directory. * Difficulty: Easy * Languages: Tcl, C * Potential mentors: larryv ==== Implement a Trac plugin to auto-assign tickets to port maintainers ==== #trac-assigner Write a Trac plugin that uses an existing PostgreSQL database of ports and their maintainers (used for http://www.macports.org/ports.php) and [wiki:SummerOfCode#Tasks automatically assigns new tickets] that have the `port` field set to the maintainer(s) of the ports listed in the field. * Difficulty: Easy * Languages: Python, SQL * Potential mentors: TBD '''Already implemented. See #40987.''' === Ports === ==== Qt 5 ==== #qt Fix issues in [query:status=assigned|new|reopened&port~=qt3|qt4|qt5 open tickets for Qt 3, Qt 4, and Qt 5], in particular allowing for concurrent installation of the various Qt versions. * Difficulty: Medium * Language: Tcl, C++ * Potential mentors: michaelld, pixilla ==== MinGW-w64 ==== #mingw Create ports for the 64-bit MinGW cross-compiler and bring the 32-bit cross-compiler up to date. The task could include improvements to the `crossgcc` PortGroup. * Difficulty: Medium * Language: Tcl, C, C++ * Potential mentors: TBD === Secondary tasks === ==== Portfiles ==== #portfiles Sweep through all Portfiles and look for useful opportunities to add more built-in Tcl functions that make Portfiles more (usefully) terse, powerful, flexible or easier to write. I'm sure there is an entirely family of helper functions yet to be written here. This might also include porting additional packages to MacPorts and cleaning up or removing obsolete ports. * Classification: Medium * Language: Tcl * Potential mentors: larryv ==== Documentation and website ==== #docs Improve MacPorts [query:status!=closed&component=guide|server/hosting|website|wiki documentation, website and Trac system]. Note that pure documentation proposals are not allowed by Google. * Difficulty: Easy to difficult * Languages: PHP, Python * Potential mentors: larryv ==== Shell environment ==== #shell-environment Add support for providing basic and port-provided environmental services to users in the `~/.profile`, `~/.cshrc`, and `~/.xinitrc` files, so that instead of manipulating the user's .profile to modify certain paths, the installer could append "`source /opt/local/etc/bash.rc`" to the end of a user's .profile file and that bash.rc would source all the files in `/opt/local/etc/bash.d`. This task alone is most probably not enough for the whole Summer Of Code. * Difficulty: Easy * Potential mentors: raimue {{{ #!comment # Listing already done tasks here, maybe parts of this could spin-off a new project idea # Done 2009 ==== Logging ==== #logging Currently MacPorts has no notion of logging of build activities of a given port or sets of ports. When a build is attempted but an error keeps it from completing, there's no way to track the problem other than the build progress that was output to the terminal, if verbose mode was requested in the first place. Otherwise, the build environment has to be pruned and the build attempted once again to even get a look at the precise error message. This is particularly problematic when automated builds are attempted, since there's usually no one around to have a look at the failure spew. An infrastructure to remedy this situation and endow MacPorts with a rich set of logging capabilities has to be developed to open up the door to true automated build runs of large sets of ports and thus to packaging of binaries, since with logging we'd have a fully reliable way of catching, reporting and processing of all sorts of fetch/configure/build/destroot/install/etc errors. This could be extended with the interaction with a server side application like MPWA that could consume these logs (read MPWA proposal). A more detailed draft of this task can be found on the LoggingProposal page. Classification: medium task to relatively challenging[[BR]] Programming languages: Tcl and C[[BR]] Potential mentor: blb }}} == Contacting us == #contact There are several ways to contact us: - Dropping a mail to the [MailingLists MacPorts-dev mailing list] will get you most attention. Note that you have to be subscribed to the list in order to send mail to it. We recommend you create a filter matching the header line `List-Id: macports-dev.lists.macosforge.org` and sort all mails matching this filter into a separate folder. When sending inquiries about Google Summer of Code, we would welcome if you included "GSoC" in the subject of your mail. - You can get quick feedback and less formal discussion by joining the `#macports` channel on the [http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml Freenode IRC network]. You'll need an IRC client to do so – [http://colloquy.info/ Colloquy] is a popular choice on OS X. Please note that due to timezones and day jobs you might not receive an answer right away. Most users will read your messages when they return and answer as soon as they can. Be prepared to wait a few hours. - Feel free to contact any potential mentor via email directly. You can get the email address by appending `@macports.org` to the handle listed in [#Mentors] above. In general, don't hesitate to contact us – we're here to help you and eager to mentor motivated students in this year's GSoC! {{{ #!div style="height: 500px;" }}} {{{ #!comment whitespace so that clicking the #contact anchor will only show the relevant information and nothing else }}}