Re: GSOC 2023 Contribution Request

[Martin Jambor <mjambor@suse.cz>]

Hello Kritika,

we are delighted that you decided to apply for GSoC and that you are
interested in choosing GCC as the project to contribute to.

On Mon, Feb 13 2023, Kritika Rag via Gcc wrote:
> Hello Sir/Mam,
>
> I’m Kritika Rag, a Computer Science pre-final year undergraduate student
> from India. I’m quite passionate about web development and competitive
> programming and now I’m looking forward to contributing to open-source
> projects. I believe that GSOC 2023 would provide me with the best way to
> start my open-source contribution journey.
>
> Since I’m a competitive programmer, I have excellent command over Data
> Structures & Algorithms and my primary language is C++, so C++ and GCC are
> something that I use daily, therefore I would love to make my contributions
> to GCC projects. After going through all the projects listed on GCC Wiki
> <https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode#Other_Project_Ideas>, these are the
> projects(any one of them) to which I would like to contribute:
>
>    1. Bug Patrol and primarily Analyze Failing Test Cases – Whether I'm
>    practicing algorithms on Leetcode, GFG, etc., or giving CP contests on
>    CodeChef, Codeforces, etc., Test case failures are something I encounter
>    daily. Working on the project would be an interesting dig for me to learn
>    about the inner workings of something that I see daily and make
>    improvements to it.
>    2.  Library Infrastructure - As quoted *"These tasks are about improving
>    the utility routine library used by GCC. If you like data structures, these
>    may be for you", *and being a data structures enthusiast I do believe
>    that I'll be able to put my best knowledge to use in this project.

I am somewhat confused here, I do not think either of the two project
ideas is listed even in the rather messy "other projects" section of our
GSoC page.  Even the quotes do not seem to be quotes, the word "utility"
does not appear on that page anywhere.

What is worse, I don't understand what the second project would be and I
don't think the first one would be appropriate as it is impossible to
set goals about unknown bugs that might arrive in the future.  Looking
at the already failing testcases in our testcase do not constitute a
reasonable project either.  There are not that many and those that exist
are there for a reason that is difficult to overcome.

So I am afraid that you'll need to look again.  find an actual area of
the project that interests you most and look for a project with
milestones.  The projects that are actually listed at
https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode might be a good start.

Ankur has provided you with excellent summary of steps to get more
familiar with GCC code base, definitely heed his advice too.

Good luck!

Martin