Google Summer of Code 2014

Introduction

KolibriOS is proud to be selected as a Mentoring Organization for Google Summer of Code 2014. This page contains our ideas list and some additional information for students and mentors. We are accepting student applications starting March 10th.

Last year, we have run an independent Summer of Code using money we collected with Kickstarter. Two students have worked on KolibriOS, and the results of 2013 Summer of Code were: adding write support for EXT2 filesystem, and adding (read-only) support for XFS filesystem.

Student Requirements

Prospective students are required to register on our developers forum, join the developers chat and submit a small bugfix / improvement to our SVN in order for their application to be considered. Examples of such tasks can be obtained by asking on developers chat or on our IRC channel (#kolibrios @ irc.freenode.net). This requirement is only to show us that you are able to work with our SVN and interact with our developers if you are selected. This task has to be completed before student application deadline (21 March 19:00 UTC).

In addition, students need to answer the following questions when applying:

1. Full Name (First + Last Name).
2. E-mail address.
3. Nickname you plan to use on our forums, SVN repository or IRC chat.
4. Age.
5. Country + city of residence.
6. Human languages you speak (write all languages and knowledge level - basic/intermediate/expert/mother tongue).
7. Name of college or university you are accepted into or enrolled in + link to their website.
8. Name of program (or faculty, or department) in that college/university you are accepted into or enrolled in.
9. Your current timezone in UTC/GMT terms (for example, Paris is UTC/GMT +1 hours right now).
10. Have you been involved with any open-source project in the past? If yes, which one, and what have you done for that project?
11. Code samples - please provide links to code that you have written. It can be your high school project, contribution to open-source organization, your college/university task or anything like that.
12. The task you are willing to work on from our list of Summer of Code 2014 ideas (or suggest your own idea, if you don't like any of the proposed ideas).
13. What other time commitments, such as school work, another job, planned vacation, etc., will you have between May 19 and August 18?

Organization

You can find the organizers on the IRC channel (#kolibrios @ irc.freenode.net) or at our forum: http://board.kolibrios.org/

Name	Nickname	Role
Yogev Ezra	yogev_ezra	Organization Administrator
Jeffrey Amelynck	hidnplayr	Mentor, Backup Administrator
Ivan Baravy	dunkaist	Mentor
Sergey Sakhno	punk_joker	Mentor

We have discussed "Google Summer of Code 2014" application with all active members of the KolibriOS Project Team, and selected only those 3 (three) people who have both the knowledge, the dedication, and the time to help their students during the entire summer. Each one of them was assigned to mentor projects in his area of specialization only. In a rare event when a Mentor from the above list cannot continue mentoring his student(s) due to personal circumstances, we will try to find a replacement Mentor, or ask the remaining Mentors to cover for the missing one. Additionally, there is always a number of knowledgeable members of our team hanging around our forum chat, and they will gladly answer any student questions that may arise, even if they haven't volunteered as Mentors themselves.

Ideas for Google Summer of Code 2014

The below list contains ideas suggested by KolibriOS team members. It is neither complete nor final.
Students are welcome (and even encouraged) to suggest their own ideas for GSoC, provided they can find a mentor amongst KolibriOS developers to guide them.

QR-code in boot log

Summary: Add a QR-code (containing the debug log) at the end of boot process

Details:

• Description: Sometimes KolibriOS cannot boot on a certain hardware configuration (gets stuck during or after boot process). In such cases, we request the user having this problem to enable debug log at boot time, take a photo of the screen and show it to us (in the forum). However, sometimes taking a good quality photo can be quite challenging (bad camera, shaking hands etc.) and the attached photo is so blurry to the point the debug log cannot be even read. The idea suggested hereby is to simultaneously encode the debug log which is outputted on the screen, to the form of QR-code, and show the resulting QR-code on empty space on the screen. In such way, any user possessing a smartphone with a camera and QR-code scanner, could scan the QR-code and submit the encoded text directly on our forums (without having a need to take a photo), and our developers, in turn, would get the debug log text immediately and won't have to unscramble a blurry photo.
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Skill level: beginner/intermediate
• Suggested by: People on habrahabr.ru
• Mentor: dunkaist

Torrent client

Summary: Write a (bit-)torrent client for KolibriOS

Details:

• Primary goal: Implement a torrent client similar to µTorrent Free edition
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Skill level: intermediate/advanced
• Suggested by: People on IRC
• Mentor: hidnplayr

Filesystem support

Summary: Improve filesystem support in KolibriOS

Details:

• Primary goal: Add Read-only support for the UDF filesystem.
• Additional goal #1: Add Write support for the UDF filesystem
• Additional goal #2: Add Write support for the NTFS filesystem (read-only support already exists)
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Skill level: intermediate/advanced
• Suggested by: dunkaist
• Mentor: dunkaist

FTP client

Summary: Create a GUI based FTP client or add FTP support to one of the existing file managers

Details:

• Primary goal: FTP access (download/upload/etc.)
• Additional goal: Create an FTP client library.
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Skill level: beginner/intermediate
• Suggested by: hidnplayr
• Mentor: hidnplayr

Improve Ethernet support

Summary: Write more Ethernet drivers.

Details:

• Primary goal: Support for popular Broadcom, Atheros and/or Marvell Yukon cards. (pick 2)
• Additional goals: Any Ethernet cards students and their mentors find.
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Skill level: intermediate/advanced
• Suggested by: hidnplayr
• Mentor: hidnplayr

FT232R driver

Summary: Write or port a FT232R (USB to serial UART interface IC) driver.

Details:

• Description: FT232R is a popular USB to serial UART interface integrated circuit. It is used in cellular phone USB data transfer cables, MCU and FPGA based boards (such as Arduino), modems, MP3 players, digital cameras, smart card readers, PDAs etc.
• Primary goal: Implement a VCP (Virtual COM Port) driver and a test application to communicate with some device by means of FT232R IC (Arduino for example).
• Additional goals:

* Write an application for uploading sketches to Arduino.

* Implement a D2XX driver (for direct access to the USB device).

• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Skill level: Intermediate.
• Suggested by: Albom
• Mentor: hidnplayr

Music player

Summary: Improve the current music player in Kolibri.

Details:

• Primary goal: Rewrite the current music player (ac97snd), in FASM, and improve its functionality.

* Support for file formats wav, mp3 and xm (using available external libraries).

* Support for playlists (m3u).

* A time display.

• Additional goals:

* Use of system wide hotkeys to control player

* Support for metadata (ID3, ...)

* More codecs (flac, vorbis, ...)

* Audio indication (oscillograph, bar graph, ...)

* Show cover art from files or album folder

* Fade in/out and/or crossover

* Streaming radio (at least mp3 over http stream)

* Skins

* Media library

• Language: Assembler/FASM (C/C++ to port codec)
• Skill level: intermediate/advanced
• Suggested by: hidnplayr
• Mentors: hidnplayr / dunkaist

Web browser: Netsurf

Summary: Complete porting of NetSurf browser for KolibriOS

Links:

• NetSurf Website
• Work done so far on NetSurf port (in Russian). If you don't know Russian, you can read English translation using Google-Translate

Details: Our developer SoUrcerer started working on NetSurf browser port. Since he has no spare time, someone else needs to complete it.

• Goal: Bring NetSurf browser port in KolibriOS to the point of 90-95% functionality, with all critical and major bugs fixed, and only minor or trivial bugs left. First job would be fixing/enhancing the build system.
• Language: C (may require writing a few lines in FASM assembly though, to port some libraries)
• Skill level: intermediate/advanced
• Suggested by: Pretty much everyone in Kolibri
• Mentors: punk_joker / hidnplayr

Web browser: WebView

Summary: Improve existing text-only web browser WebView - add more functionality and compatibility.

Links:

• HTML 4.01 Specification
• Work done so far on WebView (mostly in Russian). If you don't know Russian, you can read English translation using Google-Translate

Details:

• Primary goal: Have mostly complete HTML4 support on a good enough level to read non-complex (mobile?) websites
• Secondary goal: Add certain elements of CSS, speed optimizations
• Language: Sphinx C--. May require writing a few lines in FASM though.
• Skill level: intermediate/advanced
• Suggested by: Leency / hidnplayr
• Mentors: punk_joker / hidnplayr