[LLVMdev] Potential Google Summer of Code Applicant

Manuel Klimek
Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:21:59 -0000

+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.

Cheers,
/Manuel