Hello everyone,

We are now working on applying to GSoC [1]. We have already shaped our organization application, however, to have real chances to be selected we need a solid list of projects and mentors. We have already discussed a potential list of projects at our last foundation meeting, however, we want also to get input from the community. To that end, if you are working on anything D related that may be of value for the community (a language feature, a library, a tool etc.) and you would benefit from an extra pair of typing hands please feel free to respond to this post and suggest a project. Note that you will also need to mentor the student (typically this means having one half an hour online meeting with the student per week and answering his questions via your favorite messaging app).

This is a great opportunity to both get people involved with D and spread the word about D, so don't be shy and become a GSoC mentor!

Regards,
RazvanN

[1] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/google-summer-of-code-2025-is-here.html

On Monday, 20 January 2025 at 08:45:03 UTC, RazvanN wrote:

Just some foreign comment from community-member.
Of course I don't know how to do better and more properly, but decided just share my 5cents on potential projects:

Check projects of other langs from the recent years. Try to identify some patterns. Try to understand/hack the logic of the GSoC committee - what they prefer.

From my own (very limited) analysis, I would assume GSoC interested more in interesting, innovative, fresh and hot (khm-ML/AI-khm) topics, that could be potentially useful for wide audience of open source/science/cutting-edge technologies participants.

Remove old list of "abandoned" (this list doesn't look very well) project ideas and create new fresh list with updated and confirmed mentors.

Google most probably is not interested in internal things of D compiler and infrastructure itself. So maybe consider projects that use D (compiler/std lib/ecosystem) as a tool that can bring value for wider number of users.

Also those projects should be interesting for students and have some potential application. Maybe forget more about individual compiler stuff - and try to think about more general stuff.

Let me give some examples:

Fixing bugs / docs inside D compiler - bad. Relevant only for D - bad as well. No one else care about that (outside very limited D community).

Fix some code for GC in D - bad, but try to implement new approach in GC research inside D compiler, that in case good results could be implemented in other solutions - good.

Maybe focus more on ecosystem and interop, than internal only-D relevant tasks.

For example, make good and "official" JVM interop module (based on previous work and great JNI library from ARSD) - could be also good, because it gives some potential for Android (Google product) ecosystem.

Some langs in 2023/2024 made some numerical/AI libraries/projects, but since Ilya left D community maybe DLF will need to find new mentors for Mir/GPU/DlangScience projects..

Maybe revised PyD update and code improvement could be an example of good project (Google loves Python as well - and similar projects of Python interop were in the past)

Try to point out on strong parts of D, but keep in mind and be careful with complexity estimation.

Ability to "write fast, read fast, and run fast" - is good. So maybe consider to think about the project that 1 student could make in some limited time, but the task/project should not be "too hard". Maybe have several levels of complexity in the list.

Consider to have popular projects/sub-eco-systems in the list (to show the audience) - like Inochi2D, Auburn Sounds, Vibe.d (many repo orgs with a lot of stars in GH)

General CS tasks could be also interesting. Like "general research about ranges" could be potentially helpful for C++ and Carbon (and now even for Go).
But lack of proper data structures in the lang is limiting this topic.

Maybe try to think in a product way as well.
Web: any web standards Google can like. Oauth library, async HTTP client, WASM support, WebRTC/WebGL, HTTP2/3..

Google has several pictures libs: maybe JPEG XL improvements for Gamut. Or WebP support..

Google is doing ARM chips(Axion): so port of DMD to ARM(with description of fast compilation step) and maybe addition of NEON/SVE2 instructions to the intel-intrinsics package projects..

Google is doing quantum chips(Willow): so the project of Timon of lang for quantum computing, implemented in D..

Maybe something for ChomeOS: like flawless Dart interop, where Dart is doing interface part and D backend/computations..

On Monday, 20 January 2025 at 08:45:03 UTC, RazvanN wrote:

Ship some data structure, have projects that dont sound like research papers by students who seem to disappear like clockwork and im no entirely sure what even was shipped

On Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 22:50:41 UTC, monkyyy wrote:

Thanks for the advice, but I was hoping that on this thread community members suggest concrete projects (that they can also mentor). We have also done our research on what constitutes good GSoC projects, but we have to create them now.

RazvanN

On Wednesday, 22 January 2025 at 12:23:41 UTC, RazvanN wrote:

Taste doesnt survive as data; if google is tasteless and wants the longest title of a project and the goal is to pull as much money out of google fine; but your track record for "good" projects is poor, I couldnt name one nor do I think you get life-time contributors.

You should have the goal of meaningful artifacts or training up long term people who then stick around longer then 3 months; any metric youve been following is terrible.