Good news, for you and for us: We have been approved for this year’s edition of Google Summer of Code!
What is Google Summer of Code?
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code:
The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to students who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. The program is open to university students aged 18 or over. It was first held from May to August 2005. The amount of the stipend depends on the purchasing power parity of the country where the student’s university is located. Project ideas are listed by host organizations involved in open-source software development, though students can also propose their own project ideas.
MariaDB has been part of GSoC for many years, starting 2013.
You can now apply!
This means that you can now pick your favourite task and apply to us. There are 14 of them, 11 in MariaDB Server (C / C++ coding) and 3 in the Jupyter Notebook (Python coding).
For the details of all that, look at our Knowledge Base article Google Summer of Code 2021 at https://mariadb.com/kb/en/google-summer-of-code-2021/
Here’s an overview of the tasks:
JSON stuff
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-23143 missing a JSON_EQUALS function
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-21130 Histograms: use JSON as on-disk format
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-19160 JSON_DETAILED output unnecessarily verbose
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-16375 Function to normalize a json value
Stored Procedures / Prepared Statements
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-14959 Control over memory allocated for SP/PS
Functions
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-25015 Custom formatting of strings in MariaDB queries
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-17467 Add linear regression functions
Internals
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-24676 Non-blocking multi-reader, multi-writer buffer for IO_CACHE
Improve replication functionality
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-4989 Support for GTID in mysqlbinlog
Simplify test writing and debugging
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-12130 Improve mysqltest language
Add functionality to GRANT
- https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-5215 Granted to PUBLIC
Improve the Jupyter kernel
- https://github.com/MariaDB/mariadb_kernel/issues/5 Add autocompletion capabilities to the kernel
- https://github.com/MariaDB/mariadb_kernel/issues/9 Make kernel capable of dealing with huge SELECTs
- https://github.com/MariaDB/mariadb_kernel/issues/12 Explore interactive editing of result sets
But what about my own pet idea?
Didn’t find anything interesting in the list, but have an idea of something that MariaDB needs? Reach out to us and suggest something, we’ll let you know if it’s a good Google Summer of Code project!
By the way: the list of beginner friendly Jira issues may be a good starting point for you.
Tips for how to apply
- Think about which task you can master. For more details, read https://mariadb.com/kb/en/google-summer-of-code-2021/
- Mingle: Join us on Zulip to mingle with the community and the Google Summer of Code mentors..
- Shine: To improve your chances of being accepted, submit a pull request with a bug fix to the server.
Other links
- Our wishlist with the 11 Jira items, as a direct Jira link: items labelled gsoc21
- If you wish to get a feeling for development discussions: Subscribe to maria-developers@lists.launchpad.net.
- Take a look at the List of beginner friendly Jira issues