XMLFS for GSoC

[Michael Walker]

Hi,

I'd like to apply to work on xmlfs for GSoC this summer. I've been
going through the code over the past few days and working on it a bit,
and have come up with a list of things to implement:

 * Fix all gcc warnings [done]
    This was really just so I'd be able to see which functions were
where, this was all very trivial.
 * Support for changes to the backing store [begun]
    Not so trivial, as I haven't really done anything with ports
before, which I'm using to monitor changes to the backing store.
However, I'm making good progress with this and I think I'll be done
within the next day or two.
  * Support for editing nodes
  * Support for adding and deleting nodes
  * Support for XSLT transformations
  * Document all functions thoroughly (their purpose, parameters,
return values, and any changes to globals)

As this is my first experience of translator programming, I haven't
decided to attempt the complementary translator, as I don't think I
would be able to do that in the time available. My goal for xmlfs is a
translator that can be used to easily parse and modify XML files via a
shell script, which is document thoroughly enough so that someone with
little or no translator programming experience can understand and use
it as a reference and help for their own work. The only thing I
anticipate any particular difficulty with is the adding/deleting nodes
and XSLT transformations, as I haven't worked with libxml2 before and
so would need to read up on that.

I'm a first year computer science student, and have been using C for a
few years now. I'm pretty familiar with using the Hurd (due to Arch
Hurd), but not so much the programming side of things, and this is the
first time I've done anything with translators or ports. However, I'm
picking it up as I go along (albeit with a lot of googling for
appropriate functions and examples).

Finally, even if this doesn't get picked as a GSoC task (after I send
off my application), I still intend to do this over the summer to
better learn Hurd programming, and so either way there will be an
improved xmlfs this year :)

-- 
Michael Walker (http://www.barrucadu.co.uk)

Arch Hurd Developer;      GNU Webmaster;       FSF member #8385
http://www.archhurd.org   http://www.gnu.org   http://www.fsf.org