Re: [boost] [gsoc15] Attn: We need 2015 mentors and project ideas for Boost!

Subject: Re: [boost] [gsoc15] Attn: We need 2015 mentors and project ideas for Boost!
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-13 08:55:19

On 13 Jan 2015 at 9:51, Benedek Thaler wrote:

> > All you need is a mentor. Or, if you feel like mentoring another
> > student in Pipeline this summer ...?
> >
> 
> I'd rather like to participate as a student, it's my last chance.

You may be surprised at how often you return to university study in 
the future. I have two undergrads, a Masters and a PGCert, and I'm 
taking a third undergrad in maths by distance. Right now I'd qualify 
as a student for GSoC myself :)

> > I would though Benedek try to be flexible about your choice of
> > project if you want to be sure to get a mentor (Vicente is already
> > very overloaded every year). For example, a very attractive
> > intermediate GSoC might be working on Boost.Fiber, specifically I am
> > thinking some form of awareness of i/o in Fiber maybe. And Fiber
> > ought to be up for its second review shortly, after which it enters
> > Boost. From my short review of Fiber this week, it has very
> > considerably improved over the review last year.
> >
> 
> Actually, since Pipeline would be a fiber user, it's a great idea.
> Inter-thread fiber migration is something a good scheduler would need.
> Probably we can came up with something with Oliver when the time comes.

I should absolutely stress that I was only giving an example of 
flexibility, and that I don't mean to imply that Oliver should mentor 
anyone for GSoC on Fiber. I haven't even raised the idea with him. 
But do "think around" Pipelines where you can. And please do try to 
scare up a prearranged GSoC mentor preferably before GSoC begins (you 
have until March 16th, no rush). Prearranging a mentor is quite like 
finding a doctoral thesis supervisor, it takes time and persuading.

FYI, longer term for AFIO I intend a coroutine capable Filesystem TS 
API wrapper for AFIO such that you can use std::filesystem and 
std::fstream from coroutines and you get "free" asynchronous file 
i/o. I think that ought to satisfy Robert's good point that AFIO 
right now is a pain to use for simple tasks.

With the v1.3 engine later this month AFIO now provides all the 
facilities that the Filesystem TS does (and considerably more), and 
there would be no technical obstacle to a Fibre friendly Filesystem 
TS implementation. I would hope any such Filesystem TS implementation 
really ought to implement Alexander's enhancements to transparently 
support process local filesystems 
(https://alamaison.github.io/2014/01/09/proposal-generic-filesystem/),
 though note that I personally would far prefer uri:// prefixing than 
separate C++ APIs e.g.; zip:://c:/temp/foo.zip/Readme.txt. That way 
we can keep the complete Filesystem TS API.

I'll be extending AFIO with uri prefixing in the v1.4 engine, 
specifically temp://x to create temporary files.

Niall

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