In reply to @siddhant_codes:matrix.org
Should I consider reaching out to @Ericson2314, a potential mentor for the Nix Internals: Use std::filesystem::path for Path project, to seek their feedback on my GSoC proposal before submission? I can't find him on this channel.

In reply to @torelli:matrix.org
Hello everyone. My name is Giovanni Torelli and I'm a beginner programmer that loves software development, I want to be a gsoc contributor and I would love to have some advice about how I could be chosen. Thanks in advance

In reply to @sinan:sinanmohd.com
I'm interested in Nixpkgs analytics: nixpkgs-review with a time-budget and
adding nixpkgs library networking functions, it will directly help me as I'm
running NixOS on my PC and servers I maintain,

I'd also like to improve support for pppd and stalwart mail (something like
simple-nixos-mailserver, but fully upstreamed), as of now I'm using an out of
tree module for both

I'm comfortable with c, go, nix, /bin/sh, python, oop, and lua. I'm not as good
with python, but I've written python libraries for a networking project before.

In reply to @yoctocell:matrix.org
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/258250 looks like a good starting point. I am supposed to submit a proposal through the gsoc website directly to apply for the project?

Hi all! My name is Eric and I'm a 3rd year undergraduate Computer Engineering student at UC Irvine. I have been daily driving NixOS for roughly two years now, and I love how reusable my config is across different machines, along with how simple it is to tinker with your system without having to worry about breaking anything you've already set up. I'm intrigued by the "Build GCC libraries and compiler separately" project but I believe I don't fully understand the premise of the project from the GSoC page. Initially I thought the proposal was referring to glibc, but from a preliminary search and what I've previously heard, glibc is already distributed separately from gcc.

• Is the proposal referring to compiling libgcc separately from the main compiler process? (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-23.11/pkgs/development/compilers/gcc/common/libgcc.nix)? This feels like the wrong idea (since I don't see how this is more flexible), but I couldn't seem to find much else from looking around at nixpkgs and a brief look into GCC's components.

• It isn't immediately obvious to me why compiling the library separately from the compiler would be helpful for bootstrapping (I'm also not exactly sure what this term refers to. What's being bootstrapped?)

• I (briefly) looked into Exherbo to see what their approach to compiling GCC is, but I can't really tell what they're doing differently from a glance. I found this article (https://www.exherbolinux.org/docs/multiarch-pr.html) which seems to explain a similar concept, but I'm not sure if this is what's being referred to. It's also not a very detailed article about how Exherbo accomplishes this goal.

May I have some more clarification on the goals of this project? I tried to search for an issue mentioned in the nixpkgs repository as well, but I didn't find any relevant results.
I'm very excited by the opportunity to help out my favorite Linux distro and thank you in advance for the feedback!

In reply to @janik0:matrix.org
yes, but afaik he ist still a bit tired because of jetlag after nixcon na.

In reply to @siddhant_codes:matrix.org
seems like GSOC does allow to change proposals after submission before the deadline. Should I upload my draft proposal (https://github.com/siddhantk232/nix_gsoc/blob/main/gsoc_proposal.pdf) on the gsoc dashboard for review purposes? I need some help with splitting the work into small manageable chunks, please see https://discourse.nixos.org/t/request-for-review-of-my-gsoc24-proposal/41721 for more context

In reply to @siddhant_codes:matrix.org
Cool, I'll wait for Ericson2314 to respond before making submission on GSOC dashboard then.

In reply to @torelli:matrix.org
Hey, how did you find his contact? I only found him on GitHub

In reply to @sinan:sinanmohd.com

I'm interested in Nixpkgs analytics: nixpkgs-review with a time-budget and
adding nixpkgs library networking functions, it will directly help me as I'm
running NixOS on my PC and servers I maintain,

I'd also like to improve support for pppd and stalwart mail (something like
simple-nixos-mailserver, but fully upstreamed), as of now I'm using an out of
tree module for both

I'm comfortable with c, go, nix, /bin/sh, python, oop, and lua. I'm not as good
with python, but I've written python libraries for a networking project before.

In reply to @ss:someonex.net
Hi! Would you like to chat about the time-budget project in some more detail? We can do DM

In reply to @thatliuser:matrix.org

Hi all! My name is Eric and I'm a 3rd year undergraduate Computer Engineering student at UC Irvine. I have been daily driving NixOS for roughly two years now, and I love how reusable my config is across different machines, along with how simple it is to tinker with your system without having to worry about breaking anything you've already set up. I'm intrigued by the "Build GCC libraries and compiler separately" project but I believe I don't fully understand the premise of the project from the GSoC page. Initially I thought the proposal was referring to glibc, but from a preliminary search and what I've previously heard, glibc is already distributed separately from gcc.

• Is the proposal referring to compiling libgcc separately from the main compiler process? (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-23.11/pkgs/development/compilers/gcc/common/libgcc.nix)? This feels like the wrong idea (since I don't see how this is more flexible), but I couldn't seem to find much else from looking around at nixpkgs and a brief look into GCC's components.

• It isn't immediately obvious to me why compiling the library separately from the compiler would be helpful for bootstrapping (I'm also not exactly sure what this term refers to. What's being bootstrapped?)

• I (briefly) looked into Exherbo to see what their approach to compiling GCC is, but I can't really tell what they're doing differently from a glance. I found this article (https://www.exherbolinux.org/docs/multiarch-pr.html) which seems to explain a similar concept, but I'm not sure if this is what's being referred to. It's also not a very detailed article about how Exherbo accomplishes this goal.

May I have some more clarification on the goals of this project? I tried to search for an issue mentioned in the nixpkgs repository as well, but I didn't find any relevant results.
I'm very excited by the opportunity to help out my favorite Linux distro and thank you in advance for the feedback!

Hi Eric! Glad you are interested:

1. Yes libgcc, but also the other gcc runtime libraries. (libssp, libstdc++ are two of them off hand)

2. Don't worry about "bootstrapping" too much, just consider that before we build libgcc we may not have a libgcc, etc. A lot of compiler devs are working on regular machines and doing builds where they already have 1 copy of everything, which allows being more sloppy about depedencies and breaking cycles. Building compiler and libraries together is bad for a few reasons, but those reasons might mainly be in my head haha. Examples:

   • cross compiling mean can mean the libraries are for one platform and the compiler itself is for another. But having the installed outputs of a package involve two platforms that way is really messy and breaks assumptions in other packaging infra
   • That fact that some of the libraries do need a libc, and the libc is a separate package, means we have zig-zag problem (finishing the compiler build depeneds on downstream package build which depends on the compielr build) we can get around this by building things twice but that is ugly and wasteful