Re: Interest in Participating for GSoC '23

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Sarthak,

Sarthak Shah <shahsarthakw@gmail.com> skribis:

> Hello! I'm interested in contributing to the GNU Guix project through the
> Google Summer of Code program.
> My programming expertise mainly lies with Scheme, Common Lisp, Clojure and
> C/C++, but I can also write code in other languages when needed.
> Additionally, I have some experience as a system administrator of my
> university's HPC system.
> I am also the president of my college's equivalent of a GNU/Linux advocacy
> group, through which I have organized and facilitated GNU/Linux
> installation workshops to introduce my classmates and juniors to free
> software.

Nice, welcome!

> - Continued Rewrite of the Build Daemon in Guile
> <https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix/GSoC-2018#Continue_rewrite_build_daemon_in_Guile_Scheme>
> (Mentors
> mentioned: Ludovic (+ David, +...?))
>  (If I understand correctly, this will be a continuation of reepca's work
> in 2017
> <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-08/msg00267.html>)

I didn’t copy this project over to the GSoC-2023 page because at this
stage I’m no longer sure whether GSoC is the right way for the project
to make further progress on this.  I think developers in the community
already experienced with Guix internals and with Fibers will have to
dive in.

[...]

> Apart from the listed projects, I'm also interested in having parameterized
> packages
> <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-11/msg00312.html> in
> Guix.

That’s a good idea.  If you can become familiar with the details, I can
co-mentor it—which means we’d need to find a co-mentor.  :-)

> It's tradition for potential GSoC participants to help resolve issues
> before applying in preparation for the actual task, so I would appreciate
> suggestions on problems I could help with.

I would suggest “poking around” generally speaking, which means first
installing it.  A good first contribution is often a package: one that
you’re missing, that needs an update, etc.

Then I’d encourage you to look more closely at the area you’re interest
in, for instance package transformations: there are a couple of open
issues at <https://issues.guix.gnu.org> that you might want to read, or
perhaps you’ll have ideas of new transformations to add?

Thanks for reaching out!

Ludo’.