Re: [Boost-users] Attn: We need GSoC 2014 mentors for Boost!

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Attn: We need GSoC 2014 mentors for Boost!
From: Antony Polukhin (antoshkka_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-02-08 13:26:23

2014-02-08 20:45 GMT+04:00 Niall Douglas <s_sourceforge_at_[hidden]>:

> On 8 Feb 2014 at 9:41, Antony Polukhin wrote:
> > * Library for basic integration with spreadsheet applications
> > Excel/LibreOfficeCalc/OpenOfficeCalc and OfficePrograms (Modifying cell,
> > getting results from cells, saving documents, saving in PDF)
>
> I'm struggling to see why Boost here?
>

Boost is everywhere. We already have libraries that wrap around MPI,
manipulate images using 3rd party libraries, unify multiprecision
libraries. We have GSOC ideas for physics, databases and audio, so why not
office?

As I remember something like this library was proposed by Herb Sutter on
one of the conferences (can't find the link thou).

I see this project as a library that unifies API across different office
libraries and allow users to use Excel/Calc/Word/Writer functionality in
their own projects (for generating reports, extracting data from odt/doc
formats). This library can be useful for banking software, CRMs and many
other programs.

 > * Program protection and obfuscation tools (marking part of assembly at
> > compilation, encrypting/decrypting part of the binary on-the-fly,
> detecting
> > debuggers, detecting emulators and virtual machines, computer
> > identification and gathering hardware specific identifiers...)
>
> Similarly why Boost?
>

Library that provides instruments for a binary to self control. This can be
useful for protection against viruses and other attacks; protect programs
against reverse engineering; can help post-process binaries (find how a
compiled function looks like, put something into the binary after
compilation, compute and store checksums of binary). I hope this will open
the path for experimenting with binaries (self decompressing binary? self
modifying binary?)

Boost is a field for experiments, so why not?

>  > If there is an interest in those projects, I'll add some description to
> the
> > GSOC wiki page.
>
> Definitely +1 to the Travis CI work and improving Android/RasPI
> compatibility and testing. Feel free to add away to the GSoC page.
>

OK, I'll add it in a few days.

> Aside no 1: I may be able to help out with reviewing any Travis CI
> mentoring as AFIO uses Travis CI extensively.
>

Thanks a lot! It'll be great to have your help.

> Aside no 2: If we do use Travis CI a lot, we ought to ask the Boost
> SC to make a regular donation to Travis CI as part payment for the
> service. I send them EUR5/year for what AFIO uses, they actually wrote
> me a nice hand written letter to thank me crazily enough.
>

Let's start from finding a student for this task :)

-- 
Best regards,
Antony Polukhin