Re: [boost] [GSoC] Boost.XML

Subject: Re: [boost] [GSoC] Boost.XML
From: Andrew Sutton (andrew.n.sutton_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-03-20 09:46:22

Hi Ilie,

My name is Ilie Halip, and I'm a student at the Faculty of Computer Science
> in Iasi, Romania. I'm really interested in this year's Summer of Code, and
> stumbled upon your list of ideas yesterday.
>
> I have a few questions about the Boost.XML project.
>

Hopefully Stefan Seefeld will be able to provide more information about a
Boost.XML project. He did some work on this several years ago, but it was
never finished. This is a feature that a number of people have requested
over the last couple of years.

> First, what actually needs to be done? The project proposal isn't clear
> about that. If it's about parsing using DOM/SAX, using XPath queries, then
> the project linked from the page already does that, right? So the project
> would involve working with the existing sources and adding validation,
> tests
> etc (as mentioned in the README)?
>

I suspect that much of the initial work will be involved in actually parsing
the raw XML format in order to support DOM/SAX API's. Actually, after
looking at the previous work [1], I would say that it's all about parsing :)
I think writing a Boost SAX library would be a good start for a SoC project.

> How much working knowledge should a student have before trying to work on
> such a project? I must admit I haven't used Boost, nor libxml2 in the past
>

I'm not sure that using libxml2 is a viable option for this project. Boost
has very few external dependencies. Besides, if you use libxml2, then your
work is mostly done for you.

Is there a coding style I should follow if I were to work for this project
> to conform to Boost standards? Where can I find such info?
>

Yes. See [2]. You could also start looking at other Boost library code.

> Do you have any requirements from students working with GSoC? Something
> like: weekly reports, blogging about their experience, maintaining a wiki
> page about the status of the project?
>

We haven't defined specific student requirements yet, but you will minimally
be required to provide weekly status updates to your mentor. We may add more
requirements (keep a blog or wiki page), provide actual releases of your
code.

And last but not least... I'm actually employed right now, but my superiors
> are willing to give me more than 3 months of time off to be able to work
> for
> GSoC. Is that ok? Should I ask for more? I was looking over the timeline,
> and thought about getting a vacation between May 15th and August 30th.
> Would
> that be enough? Is it also alright if I stop working on the project for
> about a week in early June? Because I have a few exams then.
>

I don't think we've ever had a student request time off from a job before.
GSoC runs Mar 20 thru Aug 20, so that's about 3 months.

Hope that helps,

Andrew Sutton
andrew.n.sutton_at_[hidden]

[1] https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/xml/
[2] http://www.boost.org/development/requirements.html