Re: Contributor to the GSoC of 2024

[Martin Jambor <mjambor@suse.cz>]

Hello,

On Thu, Feb 22 2024, Suraj Kadapa via Gcc wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am an undergraduate student with an extensive experience in computers
> from an early age, but most of my work has been limited to arduinos, and
> raspberry pi's. I have been intrigued with compilers, architecture and low
> level programming in the past few years. I have experience with ARM
> assembly and a little bit of x86 too. I have worked towards building
> bootloaders and teaching it to my fellow peers too. I've constructed a
> process virtual machine modeled after the LC-3 architecture and am
> presently focused on developing a basic emulator for RISC-V. Both of the
> previously mentioned projects are being done in C, and I have extensive
> experience in C. I really want to know how the GNU Compiler collection
> works under the hood and this is a really good opportunity for me to
> explore and learn.

We are delighted you found contributing to GCC interesting.  The above
is impressive but you may want to also look into some rudimentary
theoretical background in the area of compilers and compiler
optimizations, at least you need to understand the term "intermediate
representation" (IR) - sometimes also called "intermediate language"
(IL).  Most of GCC is written in C++, but that should not be an obstacle
for an experienced C programmer.

>
> Please reach out to me on what needs to be done to be accepted as a
> contributor to the GSoC program under the GNU organization,

The first steps are described in the "Before you apply" section of the
GSoC wiki page: https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode#Before_you_apply

> I would love to
> work on any of the projects mentioned in the wiki(would prefer some easy
> ones though, since I am not that deep yet).

Well, you will have to be the one to pick one.  Given your interests,
I'd recommend looking at "Offloading to a separate process on the same
host" and (recently added) "Implement structured dumping of GENERIC."
But don't let me discourage you looking at Fortran or any of the others
if you think that could be your thing.

>
> My github will be linked below, and I hope to hear from you soon!
> https://github.com/surajkadapa
>
> This is my first time writing for the GSoC program, so I am not really sure
> if this is how you reach out to organizations in this capacity. Please
> excuse any potential oversights as I navigate this process.
>

So far you have done the right thing.  Build GCC from source, try to
make some sense out of the source on the high level, pick a projet and
start thinking what parts would need changing and roughly how to
implement. If you have specific questions with the above, feel free to
ask on this mailing list or on IRC.

Good luck!

Martin