GSoC 2013

Projects

The GSoC projects for 2013 will be listed here when selected:

What is GSoC?

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together over 4,500 students and more than more than 4,000 mentors & co-mentors from over 85 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

PostgreSQL has an official summer of code page: http://www.postgresql.org/developer/summerofcode.html

Advice for Students

We have developed the following Advice for Students page to get you started.

Also, students who discuss their proposals with Postgres project members *before* the application deadline are much more likely to be successful.

Mailing list for student questions

For GSoC program questions and discussion, please subscribe to:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-students/

We can have non-code related discussions on this list, and help answer questions about proposal writing.

Discussion of code should be done on the list for the specific project a student is working on.

IRC

We have an IRC channel at #postgresql and you are welcome to answer questions. Our GSoC Admins are: darkixion and agliodbs. Do not DM them without asking first!

You are welcome to ping us in the channel, or ask the channel general questions about a proposal. If you do not find help in the channel, feel free to send an email to pgsql-students@postgresql.org for help.

Proposal Format

Students are responsible for writing a proposal and submitting it to Google before the application deadline. The following outline was adapted from the Perl Foundation open source proposal HOWTO. A strong proposal will include:

• Project Title
• Name of proposer and email
• Synopsis
• Benefits to the PostgreSQL Community
• Quantifiable results
• Project Details
• Inch-stones (project broken into small, distinct chunks)
• Project Schedule
• Completeness Criteria
• Bio
  • Blog
  • Github
  • @Twitter

Project Ideas

Project ideas are to be added here.

(Please can we have visibility of ideas on Hackers please to avoid overreaching what is possible in the time, and also working on dubious projects.)

Core

• UPDATE ... RETURNING OLD link
• Add RETURNING to DDL (CREATE, ALTER, DROP) and possibly DCL (GRANT, REVOKE) link

Extensions

• cube extension improvements (indexing, type support, new KNN search metrics) link

Tools

• Rewrite (add) pg_dump and pg_restore utilities as libraries (.so, .dll & .dylib) link
• Extending MADlib functions to fill in (extrapolate) missing values in data sets link1 link2
• pg_upgrade support for Debian's pg_upgradecluster link

Project Admins

• Thom Brown
• Josh Berkus

2013 Mentors

Mentors volunteered who have been active on -hackers list:

• Alvaro Herrera
• Stephen Frost (maybe)
• Dimitri Fontaine
• Alexander Korotkov
• Pavel Golub
• David Fetter
• Magnus Hagander
• Christoph Berg
• Tomas Vondra
• Heikki Linnakangas

Other volunteers who can potentially act as assitants to mentors:

• Atri Sharma
• Gilberto Castillo

Past Success

Need to add

GOALS:

• usable code
  • useful/novel ideas
  • research projects
• longer term contributors

TODOs:

• Kick-off Meeting for Community Members
• Update GSOC page
• Advertising?
• Blog that we're participating and seeking students
• Round of private emails to people who have participated in the past: Heikki, Simon, Mark, Stephen, Merlin
  • request interest, and then follow up in asking about possible topics for students
• Mentor recruitment and then email to -hackers
  • do this much later when we have some proposals in?

• Recruitment -- no organized group effort?
  • -announce, -general, -hackers
  • user group lists
  • phppgadmin/pgadmin
  • berkeley
  • Univ. of Maryland -- contact them?

• Identify the commitfest that the code will be submitted to

Expectations

• Stuff to keep students together:
  • Regular blogging from students
  • weekly group IRC checkin? -- two checkin times maybe?

• Have students communicate on -hackers where appropriate (didn't really work?)
  • Or other relevant -devel lists

• Mailing list
  • pgsql-students (?) vs. -hackers (?) maybe up to mentor?
  • mentors mailing list -admin mailing list, berkus said?
  • students mailing list via gsoc