GSoC 0: School's Out For Summer

But it's not out forever. Alice Cooper lied to me. However, with my final final behind me I can now begin to dig into Parrot code!

One of the requirements for Summer of Code is a weekly blog posting. For future weeks, I intend to post on Monday or Tuesday so that my post is ready prior to #parrotsketch. Although GSoC has yet to officially begin, I thought I'd create a "week 0" post to work out a format for them and discuss my plans in general. I thought I'd start each post with the stated deadline from my proposal:

May 16: My course-load for this quarter is heavy, but I intend to spend as much time as possible on IRC and reading existing sources and documentation. If time allows, I will create at least the skeleton of the library with the outline of code, tests and documentation.

My end of quarter projects ran straight into my "study for finals" time and what little time I've had between finals I selfishly used to just unwind and relax. I have tried to be on IRC as much as possible, but finals have kept me from #parrotsketch and the Parrot Developer Summit was scheduled during my friend's wedding.

I haven't written any code yet, but I've prepared a fork on github to store my work in progress. I am personally a big fan of having a clean history, so this repository is going to be very unstable as I update commits to remove bugs and rebase on top of the current master. That way the final result looks nice and polished and has as few "Oops I forgot ___" or "fix mistake in ___" as possible.

The idea is that the my nqp_pct branch will have my unstable daily work in progress so that my mentor and community at large can see what I'm doing. As each section of code is polished up, it will be pushed to the nqp_pct branch in the main repository. Code pushed to there will be safe from rebasing and generally be suitable for public consumption.


The wrap-up for each week's post will be a discussion of the plan for the coming week. I like to think in lists, so expect bullet points at this point. But first, the quote from the schedule:

May 24 GSoC Start Date

Since GSoC is supposed to officially start next week, I have no planned goals to be done between now and then. However, I do intend to spend the next few days getting my mind into a Parrot mindset. (Instead of the Java and Haskell I've been programming in recently.)

  • Examine current state of nqp_pct: Particuarlly how it differs from master. I should know what's already been done before I start on anything new.
  • Investigate t/compilers/pct: I need to keep from breaking these and will add to them when I get to the realm of "new features". I've already noticed some TT numbers in there, so a couple of patches with additional tests may be in my near future.
  • Figure out the build process: When I allocated a full week to the initial conversions from PIR to NQP, I actually expected most of the hassle to be getting the Makefile right. To some extent, I just have to copy what bacek has already done for POST in nqp_pct, but I expect the details to be pesky.

I'm happy to have the stress of finals behind me and am looking forward to really digging into work. Everyone on #parrot has been very encouraging and I'm glad to have such friendly "co-workers" for the next few months.

Blog structure

I like the way you structured your post to the objectives for the coming week. I encourage other GSOCers to emulate this.