Re: [boost] Google Summer of Code 2018

Subject: Re: [boost] Google Summer of Code 2018
From: Tom Westerhout (kot.tom97_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-01-10 22:41:57

On 10/01/2018, David Bellot via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Dear Boost community,
>
> once again this year, we will apply to be a mentoring organization for the
> Google Summer of Code 2018. Our organization has been quite succesful for
> the last decade and this year we hope to be selected again.
>
> As part of filling in our application for 2018, we must supply to Google a
> list of potential GSoC mentors and potential GSoC projects for summer 2018
> in order to be approved as an organisation this year.
>
> Therefore a lengthy page of awesome project ideas at
> https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2018 before *January 23rd* would
> be an enormous help to getting us approved again this year and bringing to
> Boost another Google funding (worth dozens of thousands of dollars on
> average).

A student here rather than a mentor, but I'd still like to propose a
project. Last year we had a Boost.StaticMap[1] project which evolved into
Boost.StaticViews[2]. Niall Douglas was kind enough to mentor me during
the summer.

Boost.StaticViews is a very small C++14 library for manipulation of
compile-time data ("constexpr"-level, not "type"-level). It consists of
two layers: low-level views and non-owning containers implemented on top
of them. The views part resembles some similarity with Ranges and
could in the future be replaced by it if/when Ranges reach the high
enough level of constexpr-ness. As for the containers part, currently it
has an implementation of a static_map, a non-owning hash table with
amortized O(1) accesses which are completely optimised away if input is
available at compile-time.

Although the last GSoC lay some good foundation, quite a bit of work
still needs to be done before StaticViews can be proposed for inclusion
into Boost. With high study load I can't find enough time to seriously
work on the library now, but I believe that with some mentoring I should
be able to bring in to review-ready state during summer vacation.

Does this seem like a project Boost community could benefit from? If so,
are there any volunteers who would be willing to guide me?

Thanks in advance!

[1] https://svn.boost.org/trac10/wiki/SoC2017
[2] https://github.com/BoostGSoC17/static-views

Tom