Re: Extending static analysis GSoC

[Martin Jambor <mjambor@suse.cz>]

Hi,

I am CCing the GCC mailing list again because you are much more likely
to get advice from the people on the list than just from me.

On Wed, Feb 10 2021, Ravi Kumar wrote:
> First of all thanks for the reply. I have few questions:
> 1.How can I improve my proposal?

First and foremost, we need you to demonstrate that you have the skills
necessary to work on the project and that you have a somewhat good idea
what and how you want to accomplish.

> 2.How much I have to contribute before the application period( minimum no.
> of pull request merged)?

We do not have any such hard requirement but candidates who can
demonstrate that they can make some (even very basic) thing work are
much more likely to be accepted.  On the other hand, in the past we have
accepted students who only got something working in the summer.

> 3.Should I have some extra skill other than project requirements?

The unusual requirement for extending the static analyzer in GCC - in
the sense that it is not needed for our other project - is understanding
some basic theory of static analysis in general.

> 4.How can I know in depth about the static analyzer project(C++ support).

I suppose the main source is the source code of the static analysis pass
and various blog posts and presentations that David Malcolm, its author,
has published over the last year or so.  They should not be hard to
Google for.

Please note that you also should choose what extension of the static
analysis pass you'd like to work on.  The page
https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode lists four suggestions, you are of
course welcome to come up with your own.

>
> Till now I grabbed very few knowledge of the project. I am trying hard to
> get something out of it but I find it very difficult. I need someone's help
> who can make me understand the project completely.

I completely understand it is very hard, but there is no alternative to
sitting down, reading the source code and playing and experimenting with
it.  The analyzer lives in the gcc/analyzer subdirectory in the GCC
sources and the entry point, as far as I understand it (i.e. not very
much) is run_checkers() in gcc/analyzer/engine.cc.

You are very welcome to ask questions - even beginner's questions
but specific questions - on the mailing list and/or on our IRC channel.
Everyone is busy of course, but we try to answer such questions as much
as possible.

Good luck,

Martin