[gentoo-soc] Greetings

[gentoo-soc] Greetings

[Makassikis Marios]

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Hello,

I would be interested in working on a gentoo project for this year's GSoC.
I am currently studying Computer Science at the University of Strasbourg and
should be graduating by the end of the year.

After having a look at the list of projects on the wiki, a few of them
caught my attention : Kuroo and Ventoo.
Indeed, one course this semester is about UIs and as part of it, we were
introduced to wxWidgets and Qt. Working on either project would let me put
to practice the knowledge I have acquired. I believe Kuroo would be easier
to work on, since Ventoo uses GTK and I am not familiar with it (although I
suspect there are similarities with the other frameworks.

I browsed the gentoo-soc list's archive, and noticed other persons expressed
their interest about these projects. However, there was little response, and
as such I am unaware of the current status on these.

In case they are taken, I suppose I could work on a EBuild Generator,
although it would target a different audience than the previous two (which
is not an issue, just a comment :) ), and there is no mentor mentionned on
the wiki page.

I have a working Gentoo install (unless there's something not working but
has yet to show up) and I usually use git when I develop something. I have
to admit I'm quite new to Gentoo, as I have heard of it from long ago but
never really got to try it out. I installed it a few days ago and I quite
like it.

Regards,

Marios Makassikis


PS: Sent this yesterday, but after 10 or so hours it didn't appear in the
archive, so I assume it never made it there. I apologize if it actually
shows up twice :)

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Re: [gentoo-soc] Greetings

[Brian Dolbec]

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On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 12:24 +0200, Makassikis Marios wrote:


> I browsed the gentoo-soc list's archive, and noticed other persons
> expressed their interest about these projects. However, there was
> little response, and as such I am unaware of the current status on
> these.
> 

Yes, there have been several people that have expressed interest in
kuroo.  I have chatted with them on irc mostly about some aspects of the
project.  Feel free to ask more detail here on the mail list or on the
#gentoo-soc channel on the freenode network.


> 
> In case they are taken, I suppose I could work on a EBuild Generator,
> although it would target a different audience than the previous two
> (which is not an issue, just a comment :) ), and there is no mentor
> mentionned on the wiki page.
> 

mentors will be assigned later, but ask away, there will be people able
to answer many of your questions.

> 
> I have a working Gentoo install (unless there's something not working
> but has yet to show up) and I usually use git when I develop
> something. I have to admit I'm quite new to Gentoo, as I have heard of
> it from long ago but never really got to try it out. I installed it a
> few days ago and I quite like it.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Marios Makassikis

Welcome to Gentoo :)  
-- 
Brian Dolbec <brian.dolbec@gmail.com>

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Re: [gentoo-soc] Greetings

[Petteri Räty]

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On 04/07/2010 01:24 PM, Makassikis Marios wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 
> In case they are taken, I suppose I could work on a EBuild Generator,
> although it would target a different audience than the previous two
> (which is not an issue, just a comment :) ), and there is no mentor
> mentionned on the wiki page.
> 

There's some pitfalls for students in writing something like Ebuild
Generator. Understanding the needs of the users goes a long a way
towards making a project successful. It can be quite hard to step into
the shoes of someone who has written ebuilds for many years if you have
no experience in ebuild writing. At least an involved mentor is needed.
Not impossible of course but the application would need to detail how
the generator will work to clearly show that there's benefit in writing one.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-soc] Greetings

[Makassikis Marios]

>
> There's some pitfalls for students in writing something like Ebuild
> Generator. Understanding the needs of the users goes a long a way
> towards making a project successful. It can be quite hard to step into
> the shoes of someone who has written ebuilds for many years if you have
> no experience in ebuild writing. At least an involved mentor is needed.
> Not impossible of course but the application would need to detail how
> the generator will work to clearly show that there's benefit in writing one.
>

This actually makes perfect sense. It may prove to be a difficult task since
 I have very little experience with Gentoo.

On a completely unrelated note, today I discovered quick-init
(http://www.obliquo.net/?articles/quick-init.html) which modifies the
boot sequence
to speed it up. This application does not target Gentoo. It was
specifically written for
Arch Linux, which I am running alongside Gentoo. I was curious to see
what results
would be achieved and I was pleasantly surprised:
Using the default kernel, I measured boot time using bootchart, which
announced 40s
to get from GRUB to tty and type 'startx' (which started X with the
OpenBox WM - no
fancy KDE/Gnome).
After installing the above mentioned application, I redid the measure,
only to discover
I was down to 15s ! (Test machine is a netbook with a regular HDD). I
checked Arch's
forums and it seems several people get these results although there
are some problems.

This made me think of the project to reduce boot times that is the
wiki page, and as such
I wonder if it would be a good idea to adapt the application for
Gentoo, and fix known issues.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Regards,

Marios

Re: [gentoo-soc] Greetings

[Brian Harring]

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Marios-

For your submitted application, you didn't include any proposal of 
your timeline, what specific areas you'll be focusing on for 
optimization, what you're aiming to accomplish (10 seconds?  20 
seconds?), etc.

We'll need a full proposal- if you can't modify your existing 
application, please place it into the comments so we can review it.

Also, please note that there have been some issues w/ the SoC app 
where candidates do not receive notifications about their proposal- 
please ensure that you're subscribed to it.

Thanks, and good luck!
~harring

On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 12:24:34PM +0200, Makassikis Marios wrote:
>    Hello,
>    I would be interested in working on a gentoo project for this year's
>    GSoC.
>    I am currently studying Computer Science at the University of
>    Strasbourg and should be graduating by the end of the year.
>    After having a look at the list of projects on the wiki, a few of them
>    caught my attention : Kuroo and Ventoo.
>    Indeed, one course this semester is about UIs and as part of it, we
>    were introduced to wxWidgets and Qt. Working on either project would
>    let me put to practice the knowledge I have acquired. I believe Kuroo
>    would be easier to work on, since Ventoo uses GTK and I am not familiar
>    with it (although I suspect there are similarities with the other
>    frameworks.
>    I browsed the gentoo-soc list's archive, and noticed other persons
>    expressed their interest about these projects. However, there was
>    little response, and as such I am unaware of the current status on
>    these.
>    In case they are taken, I suppose I could work on a EBuild Generator,
>    although it would target a different audience than the previous two
>    (which is not an issue, just a comment :) ), and there is no mentor
>    mentionned on the wiki page.
>    I have a working Gentoo install (unless there's something not working
>    but has yet to show up) and I usually use git when I develop something.
>    I have to admit I'm quite new to Gentoo, as I have heard of it from
>    long ago but never really got to try it out. I installed it a few days
>    ago and I quite like it.
>    Regards,
>    Marios Makassikis
>    PS: Sent this yesterday, but after 10 or so hours it didn't appear in
>    the archive, so I assume it never made it there. I apologize if it
>    actually shows up twice :)

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