[GSOC] Looking for small patch/project to work on

[GSOC] Looking for small patch/project to work on

[Rishi Raj]

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Hi everyone,

My name is Rishi Raj, and I am a third-year undergraduate studying Computer
Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in
India. I wish to participate in this year's GSOC with GCC.

My progress so far:

   1. Successfully built the GCC from source using the installing gcc
   guide. (I will run the test suite today.)
   2. Read about different configuration options during installations and
   also went through the gcc-newbies-guide, which was an exciting read and
   provided an overview of how to proceed in gcc-contribution. I want to
   extend my appreciation to David for this.

After reading about the suggested projects described on GCC's GSOC page, I
found "Bypass assembler when generating LTO object files" and "C++:
Implement compiler built-in traits for the standard library traits"
interesting. Currently, I am examining the preliminary patch
https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-09/msg00340.html for the first project. I
can work on a small project/patch after this in a day or two. I would
greatly appreciate your suggestions for the same.

I have taken compiler theory and laboratory courses as a part of my
institute curriculum. In the laboratory, we designed a tiny-c compiler (a
subset of GCC). In theory, I learned about different phases of
compilations, various optimization techniques, etc.

Please find my course website link for a detailed overview:
https://cse.iitkgp.ac.in/~bivasm/compiler2022.html#Lecture

This course was the starting point of my interest in compiler development,
and I want to take it further by making meaningful contributions to GCC. I
hope to make some significant contributions to GCC this summer and in the
future. I would appreciate any suggestions on taking on a small
patch/project or delving deeper into the projects I am interested in
pursuing.


Best regards,

Rishi Raj

Re: [GSOC] Looking for small patch/project to work on

[David Malcolm]

On Sat, 2023-03-04 at 08:11 +0530, Rishi Raj via Gcc wrote:
> Hi everyone,

Hi, and welcome!

> 
> My name is Rishi Raj, and I am a third-year undergraduate studying
> Computer
> Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology
> Kharagpur in
> India. I wish to participate in this year's GSOC with GCC.
> 
> My progress so far:
> 
>    1. Successfully built the GCC from source using the installing gcc
>    guide. (I will run the test suite today.)
>    2. Read about different configuration options during installations
> and
>    also went through the gcc-newbies-guide, which was an exciting
> read and
>    provided an overview of how to proceed in gcc-contribution. I want
> to
>    extend my appreciation to David for this.

Thanks.  You've already built GCC from source, which is a great start.
A good thing to try next (if you haven't already) would be to try
hacking in a warning that emits:
  "hello world, I'm compiling function 'foo'"
for each function being compiled, and compile something with that...
and then do it again in the debugger, with a breakpoint on that, and
step through some of the code, as per:
https://gcc-newbies-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting-started.html#hello-world-from-the-compiler

The point here is to get you and your development environment to the
point where you can comfortably make a simple change to GCC's source,
rebuild it and quickly see the results of your edits (without having to
wait ages), and for you to get comfortable stepping through it in the
debugger.

Let me know if you run into issues (which could suggest improvements to
the guide).

> 
> After reading about the suggested projects described on GCC's GSOC
> page, I
> found "Bypass assembler when generating LTO object files" and "C++:
> Implement compiler built-in traits for the standard library traits"
> interesting. Currently, I am examining the preliminary patch
> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-09/msg00340.html for the first
> project. 

FWIW I'm not particularly expert at the specific areas of GCC relating
to the two projects you mentioned, so hopefully others on this list can
give advice/mentoring with those.

> I
> can work on a small project/patch after this in a day or two. I would
> greatly appreciate your suggestions for the same.

I'm biased here in favor of my own subproject, the static analyzer; as
discussed in the recent "[GSoC][Static Analyzer] Ideas for proposal"
thread on this list there are dozens of RFEs against the "analyzer"
component in our bugzilla, many of which are relatively small.  That
said analyzer is quite complicated, so I don't know if that's a good
first warm-up for someone who isn't planning to work on the analyzer
for their GSoC project.

We have an "easyhack" keyword in our bugzilla which you could try
searching on that.  Unfortunately, people's definitions of what is easy
vary, and I don't think anyone's been curating that list recently, so
you might want to check in here with the URLs of the things that catch
your eye to make sure they're reasonable first projects.

> 
> I have taken compiler theory and laboratory courses as a part of my
> institute curriculum. In the laboratory, we designed a tiny-c
> compiler (a
> subset of GCC). In theory, I learned about different phases of
> compilations, various optimization techniques, etc.
> 
> Please find my course website link for a detailed overview:
> https://cse.iitkgp.ac.in/~bivasm/compiler2022.html#Lecture
> 
> This course was the starting point of my interest in compiler
> development,
> and I want to take it further by making meaningful contributions to
> GCC. I
> hope to make some significant contributions to GCC this summer and in
> the
> future. I would appreciate any suggestions on taking on a small
> patch/project or delving deeper into the projects I am interested in
> pursuing.

It sounds like you have a lot of relevant knowledge; I hope we can find
you something you'll enjoy working on.

Let me know if you have any questions

Hope this is helpful; welcome again.
Dave

Re: [GSOC] Looking for small patch/project to work on

[Martin Jambor]

Hello,

we are delighted that you decided to apply for GSoC and that you have
chosen GCC as the organization.

On Sat, Mar 04 2023, Rishi Raj via Gcc wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> My name is Rishi Raj, and I am a third-year undergraduate studying Computer
> Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in
> India. I wish to participate in this year's GSOC with GCC.
>
> My progress so far:
>
>    1. Successfully built the GCC from source using the installing gcc
>    guide. (I will run the test suite today.)
>    2. Read about different configuration options during installations and
>    also went through the gcc-newbies-guide, which was an exciting read and
>    provided an overview of how to proceed in gcc-contribution. I want to
>    extend my appreciation to David for this.
>
> After reading about the suggested projects described on GCC's GSOC page, I
> found "Bypass assembler when generating LTO object files" and "C++:
> Implement compiler built-in traits for the standard library traits"
> interesting. Currently, I am examining the preliminary patch
> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-09/msg00340.html for the first
> project.

Please note that both projects have already been discussed on the
mailing list.  For information about the first one definitely have a
look at https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2023-March/240833.html

The C++ traits project has been discussed at least in
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2023-February/240816.html

If you have any questions after reading through the above, feel free to
email the mailing list again.

> I can work on a small project/patch after this in a day or two. I
> would greatly appreciate your suggestions for the same.

Unfortunately, there just are not many "small" projects that a newcomer
would complete in "a day or two."  I can only endorse what David wrote
to you in his email.  

>
> I have taken compiler theory and laboratory courses as a part of my
> institute curriculum. In the laboratory, we designed a tiny-c compiler (a
> subset of GCC). In theory, I learned about different phases of
> compilations, various optimization techniques, etc.
>
> Please find my course website link for a detailed overview:
> https://cse.iitkgp.ac.in/~bivasm/compiler2022.html#Lecture
>

That looks like a nice course after which you are likely to be familiar
with the necessary concepts for GCC work.

Good luck!

Martin