[cfe-dev] [LLVMdev] Potential Google Summer of Code Applicant

[Tobias Grosser]

On 04/02/2012 11:21 AM, Manuel Klimek wrote:
> +cfe-dev, +chandlerc
>
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Tobias Grosser<tobias at grosser.es>  wrote:
>> On 04/02/2012 05:41 AM, Patrick Edwards wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi, my name is Patrick Edwards, and I'm currently a CS major at Kent
>>> State University. I have always been interested in doing work with
>>> compilers and LLVM seems to be a perfect fit for me to learn more over
>>> the summer, and also contribute to open-source projects at the same
>>> time. However, while browsing through the project ideas, the only ideas
>>> I found accessible were the code reduction and compile with/benchmark
>>> the LLVM compiler. I would really love to help LLVM, as I have used C++
>>> in quite a few of my classes and side programs, not to mention learning
>>> other oddball languages as I wanted. If possible, could someone please
>>> point me in the right direction to contribute to LLVM in the best way I
>>> can?
>>>
>>> Thank you in advance,
>>> Patrick Edwards, potential GSoC applicant
>>
>>
>> Hi Patrick,
>>
>> besides the open project pages of the LLVM itself [1], there are also the
>> ideas list of the subprojects:
>>
>> - The clang open projects list [2]
>> - The SAFECode open projects list [3]
>> - The Polly todo list [4]
>>
>> As you already realized, not all of them are suiteable for summer of code,
>> but some of them definitely are.
>>
>> A topic I personally would think might be an interesting summer of code
>> project is a clang based gnu 'indent' replacement. Here the idea from the
>> clang open projects page:
>>
>> "Use clang libraries to implement better versions of existing tools: Clang
>> is built as a set of libraries, which means that it is possible to implement
>> capabilities similar to other source language tools, improving them in
>> various ways. Three examples are distcc, the delta testcase reduction tool,
>> and the "indent" source reformatting tool. distcc can be improved to scale
>> better and be more efficient. Delta could be faster and more efficient at
>> reducing C-family programs if built on the clang preprocessor, indent could
>> do proper formatting for complex C++ features, and it would be
>> straight-forward to extend a clang-based implementation to handle simple
>> structural rules like those in the LLVM coding standards."
>>
>> I am not an expert in clang itself, but on the clang mailing list, you there
>> are plenty of people who are. I copied Manuel, as I think he was already
>> planning to work on something like this.
>
> While it is a topic where we'll want to see major stuff going on over
> the coming year, I'm not sure that the underlying infrastructure will
> meet the GSoC timeline - we're currently in the process of getting the
> basics into mainline, and I think it would be a pain to now start
> writing larger amounts of codes on something that we'll need to change
> later.

Ah OK. I would have loved to have such a tool, but as a non-clang 
expert, I can obviously not judge if it is suited. Maybe you are aware 
of other projects suitable for GSoC,

Tobi