Ideas Page

Introduction

This is our ideas page for new developers who want to participate in the Google Summer of Code event by contributing to KolibriOS. It also contains a description of the process and requirements to participate.
A general information about Google Summer of Code can be found here: Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code'23 Contributor Requirements

Prospective contributors are required to register on our developers forum and submit a small bugfix / improvement to our SVN or GIT in order for their application to be considered. Examples of such tasks can be obtained by asking on the developers forum or on our IRC channel (#kolibrios @ irc.libera.chat). This requirement is only to show us that you are able to work with our SVN or GIT and interact with our developers if you are selected.
This task has to be completed before contributor application deadline (4 April 18:00 UTC).
In addition, contributors 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/GIT 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 (if applicable).
8. Name of program (or faculty, or department) in that college/university you are accepted into or enrolled in (if applicable).
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 2023 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 29 and August 28?

Organization

You can find the organizers at our forum: https://board.kolibrios.org

Name	Nickname	Role
Ivan Baravy	dunkaist	Administrator, Mentor
Jeffrey Amelynck	hidnplayr	Mentor, Backup Administrator
Dmitriy Smirnov	Pathoswithin	Mentor
Serhii Sakhno	Punk_Joker	Mentor
Kiril Lipatov	Leency	C-- Mentor
Konstantin Pakhtusov	KPG	Mentor (Forth)

Ideas

Sortable list of ideas for easy navigation

Idea Name	Area	Programming Language	Mentors
OpenBios in Loader	Kernel/Application	Forth, FASM (Assembler), C	KPG
File system	Kernel/Application	FASM (Assembler)	Pathoswithin
Widget toolkit	System wide	FASM (Assembler), C	dunkaist
Finish Mbed TLS port	Library	C/FASM	Punk_Joker
Port FLTK	Library	C++	Punk_Joker
Fasmg port	Application	FASM/FASMG (Assembler)	dunkaist
Unicode library	Library/Application	FASM (Assembler)	dunkaist
Virt-IO driver	Kernel	FASM (Assembler)	dunkaist
Loop device driver	Kernel	FASM (Assembler)	dunkaist
NVMe driver	Kernel	FASM (Assembler)	Punk_Joker
RSS/Atom news reader	Application	FASM (Assembler)	dunkaist
SDL2 Port	Library	C	-
Add HTML forms to WebView	Application	C--	-
J2ME Emulator	Application	C, Java	-

OpenBios in Loader

OpenBIOS is a free, portable implementation of IEEE 1275-1994 (Open Firmware). Find detailed information about OpenBIOS OpenBIOS can replace your system firmware (BIOS) partly or completely. It can also be used as a bootloader to create an Open Firmware compatible interface between legacy firmware and an operating system. This is achieved by a modular concept that consists of a portable Forth kernel and three interfaces for user interaction, device initialization and client (operating system) control in command line like shell in Linux. OpenBios implentation Fcode [1] - Bytecode is small, hardware independent and efficient. And an evaluator (bytecode virtual machine) is almost trivial to implement or/and with possible an uses JIT technology.

• Primary goal: Add OpenBios ("Forth") support to the system bootloader.
• Additional goal: Create simple interactive more device drivers
• Language: Forth, FASM (Assembler), C
• Links: Openbios Firmware in Github

File system

• Primary goal: Add write support for ext4 file system (ext4 reading and ext2 writing are already supported).
• Additional goal: Improve write support for NTFS file system.
• Language: FASM (Assembler)
• Links: Ext4 Disk Layout

Widget toolkit

• Primary goal: Extend Box_lib (a set of separate widgets) to create a full-featured widget toolkit, design architecture and implement focus handling, callbacks and other core ideas.
• Additional goal: Integrate created box_lib widgets to the C-framework, extend framework with font handling, layout manager
• Language: FASM (Assembler), C (framework)
• Links: basic idea, list of toolkits

Finish Mbed TLS port

• Primary goal: Finish MbedTLS port (headers for FASM, get ceritificates working) (TODOs)
• Additional goal: Update HTTP library (written in FASM) to support HTTPS by using mbedtls.obj
• Language: C/FASM
• Links: MbedTLS port thread

Port FLTK

• Primary goal: Make a working port of FLTK (widget library) and add it to the automatic build-system.
• Additional goal: port Scintilla (minimum working version)
• Language: C++
• Links: Official site

Language: C--, Assembler/FASM

Fasmg port

Tomasz Grysztar (creator of FASM) introduced FASMG, a new assembler engine. It would be nice to support its new syntax in KolibriOS.

• Primary goal: Write FASMG application like FASM one. Port standard KolibriOS macros to FASMG syntax.
• Additional goal: Implement macros for compatibility with FASM.
• Language: Assembler/FASM/FASMG
• Links: FASMG overview, FASMG manual

Unicode library

Unicode is a huge and sophisticated standard. Nevertheless modern OS should provide libraries with Unicode related routines like NFC, NFD, sorting, comparing, etc.

• Primary goal: Write a tiny Unicode library with core Unicode algorithms and example application.
• Additional goal: Upgrade existing applications to use the new library.
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Links: libutf

Virt-IO driver

Virtio is a virtualization standard for network and disk device drivers where just the guest's device driver "knows" it is running in a virtual environment, and cooperates with the hypervisor. This enables guests to get high performance network and disk operations, and gives most of the performance benefits of paravirtualization.

• Primary goal: Write kernel driver for, say, virt-io Ethernet card.
• Additional goal: Write more drivers.
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Links: Virt-IO wiki

Loop device driver

• Primary goal: Write loop device driver and example application to manage loop devices.
• Additional goal: Prepare a set of disk images to be used in filesystem unit tests.
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Links: loop device overview

NVMe driver

• Primary goal: Write basic NVMe device driver to support NVMe SSD
• Additional goal: Support namespaces
• Language: Assembler/FASM
• Links: NVMe Base Specification

RSS/Atom news reader

General Description

RSS and Atom are web feeds that allow users and applications to access updates of websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. For the average user, it can be used primarily as a news/update feed, where the user can subscribe to channels of interest and receive news or other updates from different sources in one place. They are based on XML and can easily be processed using AsmXml library. User application for reading RSS/Atom feeds would be a good addition to usability of KolibriOS, as it will allow users to read news feeds from different sources without need to manually open news websites.

What it gives us

RCC/Atom feed can be a great addition to the KolibriOS functionality, as it allows users to conveniently receive updates from different sources, including even on very weak devices, where opening the source of interest in the browser is impossible or problematic.

Other information

• Goals:
  • Primary: Write RSS news reader as a standalone KolibriOS application.
  • Additional: Also add Atom standart support to the app.
• Language: Any, Assembly/FASM is preffarable.
• Difficulty: Medium, you need to be familiar with XML processing and http requests, as well as general app development for KolibriOS.
• Time/Size: 100 hours.
• Links:
  • RSS on Wikipedia,
  • Atom on Wikipedia,
  • Big amont of information and implementation examples,
  • RSS specification,
  • Atom specification,
  • AsmXml library

SDL2 Port

General Description

SDL is a free cross-platform multimedia library that implements an interface to graphics, sound and input devices. This library is actively used when writing cross-platform graphical applications (mostly games). The previous version of the library, SDL 1.2, is already ported for KolibriOS, but there is no SDL 2 port, which is the most up-to-date and supported version.

What it gives us

Having support for SDL 2 in KolibriOS will not only allow developers to develop new applications using the updated functionality of the library, but also to port a huge number of existing open source programs (mostly emulators and games) from other platforms, because SDL 2 is often used to implement frontend/graphics in such applications.

Other information

• Goals:
  • Primary: Make a working port of SDL2.
  • Additional: Port additional SDL2 libraries: SDL2_image, SDL2_mixer, SDL2_ttf, etc.
  • Extra: Also port SDL 1.2 comatiblity layer to run old apps on new version of library.
• Languages: C
• Difficulty: Medium/Hard, you need to be familiar with general library porting and library development for KolibriOS.
• Time/Size: 150-200 hours, depending on amout of targeted goals.
• Links:
  • SDL Library official website
  • SDL 1.2 source code
  • Source code of current implementation of SDL in KolibriOS

Add HTML forms support to WebView

General Description

Despite supporting many basic HTML features, the WebView browser does not currently support HTML forms (<form>, <input>, etc.). This makes its use extremely limited and prevents it from utilizing the functionality of many popular sites. Therefore, it would be great to implement this functionality in WebView.

What it gives us

Because of the lack of form support, WebView can't even use search engines directly (currently only indirect use of Google in the address bar is possible). This alone would be a great addition to its capabilities and would make its use much more convenient and intuitive. In addition, forms could also be used on sites like online libraries or forums, thus giving KolibriOS users a more complete access to the Internet.

Other information

• Goals:
  • Primary: Add support for <form>, <input> for types that was prior to HTML5.
  • Additional: Add input types that was introduced in HTML5.
• Language: C--
• Difficulty: Medium/Hard, you need to be familiar with HTML parsing and web requests.
• Time/Size: 150 hours, depending on amout of targeted goals.
• Links:
  • HTML fors specification
  • WebView source code on SVN
  • WebView source code on GitHub

J2ME Emulator

Thousands of games and programs have been created for the j2me platform. It would be cool to be able to run them in KolibriOS.

• Primary goal: Port JVM and java.microedition.* runtime
• Additional goal: Make it run most of popular j2me games
• Language: C, Java
• Links: miniJVM

Rust library development

Develop existing library for writing KolibriOS programs in Rust

• Goals:
  • Implement other system functions
  • Make wrappers for DLL's
• Languages: Rust, FASM (optional)
• Links:
  • Kernel API ru
  • libraries ru
• Repo: GitHub

Rough Guide for Prospective Contributors

• As the kernel is written in FASM, ability to write and understand i386-assembly code is very useful.
• C is also a plus as some applications/libraries and components are written in C. Also, C is useful to interface with assembly at times.
• Familiarity with the GNU landscape like Autotools, GCC etc are also a plus to have (especially for porting software)
• The desire to take challenging problems and solve them is also required as several parts of the code base require thought for design and implementation. (The mentors can help you with that :) )
• Hanging out on LiberaChat's #kolibriOS and our forum where developers mostly hang out.
• Languages used for communication are English and Russian (although most developers are bilingual, and you can always ask someone for help)
• Get in touch with other developers via IRC / Forums and enjoy your stay!

I'm a potential GSoC contributor. I'm scared of all the assembly and docs here! Where should I start?! :'(

Start here : http://wiki.kolibrios.org/wiki/HowTo This will help you set up KolibriOS. Easiest will be to use either Qemu or VirtualBox as most developers use it and thus will be able to help you with eventual problems. Feel free however to try something else and let us know how it goes!

I'm a potential GSoC contributor. What is this test task?!

Regarding the test mentioned above, it is for assessing your current skill set and their relevance regarding the project that you want to eventually work on. In most cases, your potential mentor will assign you a task via IRC / Forum but another developer can do this as well . Meanwhile, In case you are waiting for a test task, you can go through our bug tracker and find a small task to work on yourself, or learn about KolibriOS by going through example code.

I want to play with the code but my college blocks SVN

If you are have trouble accessing, please do mention it on the forums. You can temporarily use this backup git repository: http://repo.or.cz/w/kolibrios.git

All the ideas seem interesting, But..

Feel free to suggest your own idea! This is encouraged largely both in GSoC and KolibriOS. The mentors will be glad to such an idea and assess it's feasibility / usability for Kolibri.

Great Guide! But I still don't understand X

Please read Documentation / Development pages on this Wiki. If you have any doubts, feel free to connect with other KolibriOS users and developers through Forum Chat or #kolibrios on LiberaChat. Please ask developers / mentors on Forum Chat or IRC . Please be patient on IRC and Forum as developers are on different time zones and it might take a few hours to get back to you. You can also start a Forum thread if it is about something you feel is a general issue.

Most importantly...Have Fun!