Draft proposal for mentoring:
Subject: Vesta as a Mentoring Organization To: soc2006support@google.com I'm the primary maintainer of the Vesta free software project (http://www.vestasys.org/). We would be interested in becoming a mentoring organization for Summer of Code 2006. Vesta is a software configuration management system. The metaphor that works for most people is that it replaces both CVS and make, though there's a lot more to it than that. Probably it's most interesting feature is that it guarantees that all builds are precisely repeatable, because builds can only make use of files under revision control. Vesta includes a wide variety of interesting code which would give students the opportunity to gain experience in different areas, including: - A high-performance virtual filesystem with an NFS interface - A special-purpose interpreted language with a unique fine-grained dependency recording mechanism - A shared memoization cache for the interpreter making it possible to re-use partial results from previous evaluations (builds) We've put together an initial list of a few ideas for possible student projects: http://wiki.vestasys.org/GoogleSummerOfCode2006 Vesta is in production use at Intel for microprocessor design. Intel employs two full-time programmers working on Vesta (myself and one other). While I would be the primary mentor, there would be several other mentors available. --Ken Schalk P.S. It may also worth mentioning that Vesta is the result of a significant research and development project. A final version of the research report has recently been published: http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-102-22-2307961-0,00.html