A report from the (NFG) front lines.

After taking some time off GSoC work to pay the parrot Upgrade Tax that plumage had accumulated in the months since 2.3 shipped, and watching the World Cup this hasn't been an awfully productive week, code-wise. However, there's been quite a bit of work and planing done anyway.

As the time for the midterm evaluations comes nearer, so does the point where NFG strings will become usable. I can't promise full functionality by the midterms deadline, but it shouldn't come too long after that. But, given that I'm writing this knee-deep in packfile guts, trying to work out the issues with NFG string freezing and thawing, I should probably stay on the conservative side of my estimates.

On the other hand, proper freezing and thawing is the next to last feature in my readiness 'checklist'. This, now that Iterator support is done, is the last way to get NFG strings in and out of parrot, which means I can go back to finishing up the internals and work out the latest cross-encoding issues, so we can plug this stuff into the rest of the bird and see how it flies.

I also managed to grab a chunk of allison's time to pester her with questions and get some architectural input and a bit of guidance on the best way to tackle some of the current transcoding issues I'm having, as well as lay out some goals and direction for my work after NFG becomes functional.