[Xapian-discuss] Google Summer of Code 2009

[Olly Betts]

Google's Summer of Code is happening again this year.  In a nutshell,
Google pay university-level students to work on Free/Open Source
software over the (Northern hemisphere) Summer.  If you aren't familiar
with it already, you can find out more here:

http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2009/faqs.html

Xapian hasn't taken part before, but Richard Boulton and I both mentored 
projects for SWIG last year which had relevance to Xapian (1.1.0 will
support Python 3 thanks to the work of Haoyu Bai), and Richard mentored
a project for adding Xapian search to the moinmoin wiki in (I think)
2006.

We're contemplating applying for Xapian to be a mentoring organisation
this year, though we've not finally decided (the downside is it takes
up a fair amount of time to admin and mentor).  We need to apply this
week before noon Friday PST if we're going to.

So if you're interested in mentoring, or are an eligible student and
fancy doing a Xapian-related project, please speak up in the next few
days.  If we don't apply, or aren't accepted, I'm likely to be up for
mentoring or co-mentoring Xapian-related projects for other
organisations.

For mentoring, some familiarity with the Xapian source is probably
needed, but it's not a problem if you have to direct hard questions to
someone else.

There are some project ideas here, but you're welcome to propose your
own:

http://trac.xapian.org/wiki/HelpWanted

Feel free to discuss ideas or ask questions here or on #xapian on
freenode (but don't expect an instant response on IRC).

And perhaps I should say explicitly, we're always happy to provide
"mentoring"-like assistance to people wanting to enhance Xapian, even if
you aren't eligible for GSoC!

Cheers,
    Olly