Re: Some Questions

[Michael Lucy]

Hi Andy,

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Andy Wingo <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> On Thu 25 Mar 2010 06:53, Michael Lucy <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I'm interested in applying to work on Guile, and I was hoping to talk
>> to somebody about the project ideas.  I noticed that
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/ideas-2010.html said there
>> were already mentors picked out for the various projects; should I be
>> talking to them directly or writing to the Guile mailing lists?
>
> I am a Guile co-maintainer, and mentored Daniel Kraft's work on the
> elisp compiler last year. I prefer to talk over the mailing list, as it
> saves me bandwidth :)

Should I be on the mailing list then?  I wasn't able to find a place
to sign up.  Or should I just send things to the mailing list too
(like this one) so it gets filed properly for you?

Anyway, I'm interested in the compiling-things-to-guile idea.  You
mention Lua on the GSOC ideas page, but you also mention Python on
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ideas.html .  Do you have a
preference as to which of these I'd try to implement?  I know a bit of
Python and next to no Lua, but Lua strikes me as simpler--do you think
it would be significantly easier to finish a Lua-to-Guile compiler
over the summer?

You also mention on the GSOC ideas page that there's an unfinished
javascript compiler--is there already a lexical analyzer/parser
generator thing from that which I could re-use?  If not, do you think
it would be easier to port something that already exists into Guile or
write one myself?

>
>> My school has unusually late finals (June 7-11) which happen to fall
>> in the actual coding period--would it be a significant problem if I
>> did minimal work for a week around then and made it up either by
>> starting during community bonding period or continuing after the
>> project has officially finished?
>
> No, I would have no problem with that.
>
>> For the "Qualification" portion of the application, are you looking
>> for a summary of relevant technical knowledge or a resume-ish thing?
>> Do you want a resume-ish thing anywhere in the application?  (I'm
>> going off of the list of information under "Your proposal" from
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/guidelines.html ).
>
> I would want code :) If I were to act as your mentor (possible, though
> there are others), I would want to know that I didn't have to do too
> much supervision -- so I would like to see some patches or something.
> Basically I would want evidence of capabilities, a vision of what you
> want to do, and some simple "just showing up" (half the battle, honestly
> :).

Can do.  It seems like developing a foo-to-guile compiler would be
mostly new development, so the relevant skill would be producing new
guile code; could I just write a module or something?  Or if I should
be modifying existing code, what could use the work?

>
> Apologies if this is all obvious. In any case, stop by guile-devel, or

Its all been very helpful; thanks for taking the time to answer.

> if you can #guile on freenode, during the european day and evening
> hours.
>
> Happy hacking!
>
> Andy
> --
> http://wingolog.org/
>