Re: [GSoC] Interest in project ideas and request for a small patch

[David Malcolm <dmalcolm@redhat.com>]

On Wed, 2023-03-15 at 17:35 +0100, Benjamin Priour via Gcc wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm Benjamin and I have been looking around the mail list and the
> code base
> since last December, where I had to write a simple Deca compiler
> within a
> month as a team. Next paragraph is me introducing myself -ranting
> really-
> for too long.
> 
> I am from France, in my Computer science master's first year, and
> very much
> interested in compilers and operating systems. I was already
> considering
> applying for the GSoC, but felt rather intimidated by the scale of it
> so I
> kind of forgot about it until last week my university housed a
> gathering
> event for companies to promote internships.
> Few of them appealed to me, while my teacher cheered for me to try
> and
> reach you out, so here I am.

Hi Benjamin, thanks for reaching out.

Don't let feeling intimdated put you off.  GCC is a big project, but we
don't expect newcomers to understand everything from the beginning
(I've been working on it for about 10 years now, and I'm still
discovering areas of the code I hadn't see before).

> 
> Hence, even if it's two weeks late, I would like to express my
> interest in
> contributing to the project ideas listed below, and request for small
> patch
> I could work on.

I don't think you're late; the timetable here:
  https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline
says that we're still in "discussing application ideas" phase, and the
deadline for actually applying is April 4th (IIRC Google enforces that
one strictly).

> 
> - [Extend the static analysis pass] is the one I feel the most
> confident
> in, but I see it is already quite envied.

Note that there could be more that one project involving the analyzer;
the wiki page lists several ideas (and our bugzilla instance has plenty
of other ideas for new features).

I would be mentoring analyzer projects.  I mentored two different
analyzer projects last year; both students did well.

[...snip other project ideas...]
> 
> I have experience working on a Python debugger during my previous
> internship, as well as the full-time compiler project I did last
> January.
> From those experiences, reading Crafting Interpreters (R.Nystrom) and
> my
> language theory courses, I'm certain I will enjoy contributing to
> this.

It sounds like you have a lot of relevant knowledge already.

> 
> Oof, finally braced myself to reach you out, sadly almost too late,
> but I
> just got a boulder-sized weight off my shoulders.
> Thanks in advance! -  I tried to keep it short.
> 

Hope the above is helpful; thanks for reaching out
Dave