Re: [gentoo-soc] Some project ideas

[Brian Dolbec]

On Mon, 2013-03-04 at 23:44 +0100, Antoine Pinsard wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> I have two more project ideas and wonder if they are good ones and if
> they fit well the summer of code.
>
> The first one came from this discussion on Gentoo-Chat:
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-951096.html
>
> According to some users (well, actually one for the time being), some
> portage tools "are out of date or do not completely fulfill the
> requirements of users" (last message of the first page).
>
> The idea is thus to fetch these tools and put them into two lists: those
> which need a few fixes and those which are better to be fully rewritten.
> Then evaluate which ones can be done while the summer of code.
>
> Do you think it could be a good subject?


First sorry it's taken so long to respond. I've been quite busy, plus I
wasn't sure how to best reply...

Well, I know that we would like to re-write euse into python from bash.
By doing that euse could use the portage api calls to get better, more
consistent/current data to provide the users.  It could also speed up
it's operation over the bash version (minor point).  It would make it
easier to maintain as changes in operation on those files, accessing the
data about the flags, etc. change, the api calls are likely to not
change.  That would make many changes automatically available, used
without needing to update the code.  An euse re-write in python using
the portage api would also allow for more options/features to be easily
added.

However I don't think that an euse re-write would be enough for gsoc
project.  There are other tools in gentoolkit that could use more
updates, but for the most part are not extensive.  

I've cc'd the tools-portage alias so that we can all particiapte in any
further inquiries about gentoolkit and other tools-portage packages that
we maintain.

For a well motivated student we may be able to come up with enough work
suitable for a gsoc project.

> Thanks