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List:       gcc-fortran
Subject:    GSoC 2008
From:       Janus Weil <jaydub66 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2008-03-26 0:47:38
Message-ID: 47E99D2A.2020900 () gmail ! com
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Dear gfortraners,
after having successfully participated in Google's Summer of Code last 
year, working on gfortran, I'm thinking about applying again this year. 
I still don't know for sure if I will have the time, but I would 
definitely like to.

Now the most obvious thing for me to do would be to continue working on 
last year's project, namely procedure pointers and type-bound 
procedures. As you probably remember I implemented most of the basic 
PROCEDURE syntax, which went into the 4.3, but didn't really finish 
procedure pointers. So I could try to finish it this year and see how 
far I get into type-bound procedures.

First question: Do you think this would be helpful at this point, or is 
there any other project you would prefer me to do instead (may it be 
more urgent/more important/more appropriate for SoC/etc)? I remember 
Paul making some kind of plan for F2003 some weeks ago (connected to 
parametrized derived types). I don't know how far that has gone now, and 
how my efforts would fit in there.

Another thing that I noticed is that there seems to be a lack of 
documentation for the gfortran front end, and its internal 
representation in particular. For C/C++ one can find a lot of 
information, while for Fortran there is basically nothing, which makes 
it very hard for beginners (like me) to get into gfortran. Last year I 
was mostly working on pure syntax stuff which was not going very deep 
into the internals of gfortran, but for procedure pointers I guess some 
more knowledge of the internal representation would be needed.

So, second question: Do you think a project concerning documentation 
would be worthwhile to think about? Would this be appropriate for Summer 
of Code? And would it be satisfying to only work on documentation 
instead of doing real coding? I guess for me it would be more 
interesting to work on a F2003 feature like procedure pointers, but if 
people think setting up some solid documentation would be more helpful, 
I would also be willing to do that.

And then, third question, if I would decide to apply for GSoC and find a 
suitable project, would there be anyone willing to be my mentor? Last 
year this was a bit of a problem, and in the end Steven Bosscher did it, 
just because no one else would do it, and although he's not very active 
on gfortran any more. But he basically ended up doing only the 
'official' stuff (which is not a lot), and I was communicating much more 
with other people about the project itself and the technical details. It 
would be great if this year someone could be mentor who is closer to the 
project itself. I think the 'official' stuff for Google is really not a 
lot of work at all. There is just some midterm evaluation and a final 
evaluation, each consisting only of a short questionnaire. Apart from 
that it would be just me getting on your nerves and asking lots of 
stupid questions, which I'll do anyway to anyone who is subscribed to 
the mailing list ;)

Would be great to hear some opinions from you guys.
Cheers,
Janus

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