[GSoC 2017] Porting Google Go (GCC: gccgo) - Questions and Concerns

[Louis Jenkins]

Hello recipients of this email,

 

(I’m embarrassed to say I do not know whether this email address is to the mailing list or to a single person.)

 

I would like to start off by saying that I am extremely interested in a project like this, because of the potential massive challenge as well as potentially being able to use my former experience and knowledge of Go’s internals in my favor for this project. I’ll being with my experiences, considering the last contribution to the project was over 3 years ago.

 

Experience

 

Last summer I had an R.E.U where I worked to add a concurrent map to the Go language. Now, while I do have some knowledge of certain areas of the Go runtime and compiler, it is might not be enough. As well, I worked mainly independently from the actual developers themselves, even going against their advice against doing so (and while I do not regret my decision to continue to pursue my goal anyway, I can’t say I have many friends among the Go development team), I did briefly speak with Ian Lance Taylor and he had been extremely helpful, although with the few others who helped me when I asked for it. Why is this relevant? I have experience with the language and internals of Go. Now, I do NOT have experience with gccgo, but I believe I could be a major help to the project given the chance.

 

Inquiries

 

The project has not been touched in 3 years, and apparently is still listed, and even has a bounty (although the low amount of little over $7 is rather comical). As such, I am wondering if the website is outdated, or whether or not this is even possible as is. I’d love to go through the process of making and submitting a patch on this project, it would be a huge waste if no one was around to review it. As well, I do not have experience GNU Hurd, although I am willing and the project’s first goal is to make the language functional. However, again, before I delve further I would like to know first if it is still active, or can potentially be restarted.

 

• Louis Jenkins