Six impossible things

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to our selected students for the 2010 Debian Google Summer of Code!

They should pop up on Debian Planet soon and you’re welcome to come talk to them on #debian-soc on irc.debian.org

Aptitude Qt

by Piotr Galiszewski, mentored by Sune Vuorela

Qt GUI for aptitude. Currently, KDE users need to use Aptitude via the console interface, or install the newly developed GTK frontend, which does not fit well into KDE desktop. Making Qt frontend to Aptitude would solve this problem and bring an advanced and fully Debian-compliant graphical package manager to KDE.

Content-aware Config Files Upgrading

by Krzysztof Tyszecki, mentored by Dominique Dumont

When a package deliver configuration files, the problem of merging user data with new configuration instructions will arise during package upgrades on users systems. Sometimes merging can be done with 3 way merge, but this process does not insure that the resulting file is correct or even legal. This project intends to create standards, tools an heuristics to make the scary config file conflict resolution debconf prompt a thing of the past.

Debbugs Bug Reporting and Manipulation API

by David Wendt Jr., mentored by Bastian Venthur

Currently debbugs supports a SOAP interface for querying Debian’s Bug Tracking System. Unfortunately this operation is read-only. This project would create an API for debbugs which supports sending and manipulating bug reports, without having to resort to email. This project does not intend to replace email as mean to manipulate the BTS but rather to enhance the BTS to allow other means of bug creation and manipulation.

Debian High Performance Computing on Clouds

by Dominique Belhachemi, mentored by Steffen Moeller

The project paves a way to combine the demands in high performance computing with the dynamics of compute clouds with Debian. Combining the Eucalyptus cloud computing infrastructure with the TORQUE resource manager and preparing the components for dynamically added and removed instances provides the user with a attractive high performance computing environment. Such a system allows users to share resources with large compute centers with minimal changes in their workflow and scripts.

Debian-Installer on Neo FreeRunner and Handheld Devices

by Thibaut Girka, mentored by Gaudenz Steinlin

This project aims to improve the installation experience of Debian on handheld devices by replacing ad-hoc install scripts by a full-blown and adapted Debian-Installer. The Neo FreeRunner is used as it is the most convenient and open device from a development standpoint, but other devices will also be explored.

Hurd port and de-Linux-ization of Debian-Installer

by Jérémie Koenig, mentored by Samuel Thibault

The primary means of distributing the Hurd is through Debian GNU/Hurd. However, the installation CDs presently use an ancient, non-native installer. The goal of this project is to port the missing parts of Debian-Installer to Hurd. To achieve this, all problematic Linux-specific code in Debian-Installer will be replaced by less or non-kernel dependent code, paving the way for better support of other non-Linux ports of Debian.

Multi-Arch support in APT

by David Kalnischkies, mentored by Michael Vogt

Hardware like 64bit processors are perfectly able to execute 32bit opcode but until now this potentiality is disregard as the infrastructure tools like dpkg and APT are not able to install and/or solve dependencies across multiple architectures. The project therefore focuses on enabling APT to work out good solutions in a MultiArch aware environments without the need of hacky and partly working biarch packages currently in use.

Package Repository Analysis and Migration Automation

by Ricardo O’Donell, mentored by Neil Williams

Emdebian uses a filter to select packages from the main Debian repositories that are considered useful to embedded devices, excluding the majority of packages. The results of processing the filter are automated but maintaining the filter list is manual. This project seeks to automate certain elements of the filtering process to cope with specific conditions. This project will also generalize to more elaborate and intelligent algorithms to improve the transitions of the main Debian archives.

Smart Upload Server for FTP Master

by Petr Jasek, mentored by Joerg Jaspert

Making packages upload smarter, more interactive and painless for uploaders by switching from anonymous FTP and Cron jobs to a robust protocol and modern package checking and processing daemon. This daemon would test early and report early, saving developers time.

More details coming soon on http://wiki.debian.org/gsoc

Congratulations everyone and have a fruitful summer!

The student application period for the Google Summer of Code has started since March 29th, but there is still time: the deadline is Friday, April 9th at 19:00 UTC.

If you’re a student, go check out the Debian Ideas page. Pick an idea you like or suggest your own. Come talk to the Summer of Code team on #debian-soc on irc.debian.org and on the soc-coordination mailing list. Work with us to perfect your proposal before the deadline and hopefully, you’ll get your awesome project and your ticket to DebConf10 in New York this summer.

Do you like to tinker ? Do you like having a positive impact on all kinds of users ? The Google Summer of Code at Debian has been a exceptional experience for all our students over these past years and we look forward to welcoming you in this great family to work on the foundations of the Linux experience of millions of users spanning several distributions, from the smallest embedded devices to the largest supercomputers.

So, please take a look at our Ideas page, apply and tell your friends to do so by rebloging, retweeting, reeverything!