Changes between Version 289 and Version 290 of SummerOfCode


Ignore:
Timestamp:
Jan 29, 2018, 1:17:01 PM (7 years ago)
Author:
umeshksingla (Umesh Singla)
Comment:

re-order projects: moving projects with information higher

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  • SummerOfCode

    v289 v290  
    9595For the students and projects in the previous editions of GSoC with MacPorts, see [[SummerOfCodeArchive]].
    9696
    97 == Tasks ==
     97== Projects ==
    9898
    9999This is a list of some potential tasks that student GSoC members could undertake. These are just ideas, and while they express our current concerns, we are open to blue-sky projects related to MacPorts.
     
    101101Please note that this list is absolutely '''not exclusive'''! If you have any idea about what you want to see improved in MacPorts, you are free to propose this as your own project. In any case, we recommend you talk to mentors before writing your application.
    102102
    103 === Ports ===
    104 
    105 ==== Qt 5 ==== #qt
    106 
    107 Fix issues in [query:status=assigned|new|reopened&port~=qt3|qt4|qt5 open tickets for Qt 3, Qt 4, and Qt 5], in particular allowing for concurrent installation of the various Qt versions (Note: co-installable ports for Qt 4.8.6, 5.3.2 and 5.4.1 have already been submitted to Trac).
    108 
    109 * Difficulty: Medium
    110 * Language: Tcl, C++
    111 * Potential mentors: michaelld, pixilla
    112 
    113 === Core tasks ===
    114 
    115 
    116 ==== Phase out dependency on Xcode ==== #xcode
    117 
    118 MacPorts currently requires a full Xcode installation, even though a lot of ports will install just fine with the Command Line Tools package only. Since we also have a number of ports that need Xcode to build, we cannot completely remove the Xcode dependency. Your task would be to provide a way for maintainers to easily identify ports that depend on Xcode and mark them as such, so MacPorts can warn users without Xcode installed that a port they want to install needs the full Xcode package.
    119 
    120 To achieve this, you can modify "trace mode", a `DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`-based sandbox to track whether a port has accessed files belonging to the Xcode package. If it does, your modifications should cause a warning to be printed suggesting the port maintainers to add `use_xcode yes` to the Portfile (unless of course, it is already there). You should also implement an error message if a user without Xcode installed tries to install a port that has `use_xcode yes` set.
    121 
    122 * Difficulty: Medium
    123 * Languages: Tcl, C
    124 * Potential mentors: cal
    125 
    126 ==== MacPorts port for self-management ==== #self-management
    127 
    128 The MacPorts port should be the source for updating a user’s MacPorts installation.
    129 
    130 Currently the MacPorts port is used to build the .pkg installer for MacPorts that is used for the initial installation of MacPorts, and port uses the “selfupdate” mechanism for maintaining the MacPorts installation. The selfupdate mechanism is (at least not documented as such) not accessible through the MacPorts API and does not use the MacPorts mechanisms for maintaining ports.
    131 
    132 * Difficulty: Challenging
    133 * Languages: Tcl, C
    134 * Potential mentors: TBD
    135 
    136 ==== Implement fakeroot functionality for destroot phase ==== #fakeroot
    137 
    138 Currently MacPorts uses root privileges in the destroot phase. That should be replaced by a system that runs as the macports user, but intercepts all operations that would require root privileges (chown/chmod/etc.) and record the resulting permissions in a database.
    139 
    140 The existing functionality of trace mode in darwintracelib1.0 could be leveraged for this task.
    141 
    142 * Difficulty: Medium
    143 * Languages: Tcl, C
    144 * Potential mentors: jeremyhu
    145 
    146 ==== Generating Portfiles ====
    147 
    148 There are multiple tasks related to the generation of Portfiles. Some of these may not be enough work for a full summer project, so they could be combined for proposals freely when the applying student wants to.
    149 
    150 ===== Perl modules integration from CPAN ===== #cpan2port
    151 
    152 There has been [[browser:contrib/cpan2port|an attempt]] to write a script for automatic generation of Portfiles from CPAN. This would simplify the maintenance of Perl modules in MacPorts. Revive this project and finish the script or rewrite it.
    153 
    154 Resources:
    155 * http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/perl/g-cpan.xml
    156 * http://search.cpan.org/~bingos/CPANPLUS-0.9001/bin/cpan2dist
    157 * http://packages.debian.org/stable/dh-make-perl
    158 
    159 * Difficulty: Easy to medium
    160 * Languages: Perl, probably Tcl
    161 * Potential mentors: pixilla
    162 
    163 ===== Read packages from other various package managers ===== #foo2port
    164 
    165 As with the cpan2port proposal above, and with the previous [wiki:pypi2port pypi2port] GSoC entry, except with other package managers, such as [http://opam.ocamlpro.com/ opam] for ocaml packages, [http://www.haskell.org/cabal/ cabal] for haskell, [http://luarocks.org/ luarocks] for lua, [https://npmjs.org/ npm] for node.js, and so on.
    166 
    167 * Classification: Medium
    168 * Languages: Tcl, C, OCaml, Haskell, Lua, Node.js, etc.
    169 * Potential mentors: pixilla
    170 
    171 ==== Speed up trace mode ==== #tracemode
    172 
    173 Trace mode is a library preloading-based sandbox used to hide files that a port does not depend on or that are not part of a standard system's installation (such as `/usr/local`). This can avoid problems due to incompatible user-installed software and avoid "automagic" dependencies and increase the reproducibility of builds.
    174 
    175 Unfortunately, enabling trace mode adds a significant performance penalty to the build process. However, the trace mode code can certainly be optimized using appropriate cache data structures, such as a modified [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie Trie]. Your task would be to identify the performance bottle necks, draft appropriate caching data structures and implement them.
    176 
    177 * Difficulty: Medium to Hard
    178 * Programming languages: Tcl, C
    179 * Potential mentors: cal
    180 
    181 
    182 ===== Auto-detection of build dependencies ===== #dependencies-gen
    183 
    184 When creating a new portfile one of the problems is always the specification of the complete (and preferably minimal) list of build dependencies, especially when one starts with a rather complete install where most dependencies are already available.
    185 
    186 It is possible to invert the trace mode logic so that it detects all files a configure and/or build process accesses, in ${prefix} but outside of the port's build directory. This information can then be used to generate a dependency tree and information from the registry can then be used to simplify that tree so that it only lists direct dependencies.
    187 
    188 * Difficulty: Medium to Easy
    189 * Programming languages: Tcl, C
    190 * Potential mentors: cal
    191 
    192 ==== Improve startupitem code ==== #startupitem
    193 
    194 MacPorts has the ability to automatically generate startup items for the current platform. For OS X, these are plist files for launchd which will be installed as `/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.*.plist`. The current code would need a little care and could make use of options which have been added in recent releases of launchd.
    195 
    196 Features that could be useful include (but are not limited to):
    197  - Not using daemondo if the daemon works fine under launchd without it
    198  - Ability to install multiple plists
    199  - Support for LaunchAgents as well as LaunchDaemons
    200  - Installing plists in ~/Library for non-root installs if the user wants
    201  - only modify specific XML tags to avoid clobbering additions by user
    202  - Support startupitems in standalone binary packages (currently a brutal hack is used to include daemondo in such packages, see #43648)
    203 
    204 * Difficulty: Easy
    205 * Languages: Tcl, C
    206 * Potential mentors: larryv, pixilla
    207 
    208 ==== Parallel execution ==== #parallel
    209 
    210 When an action will run targets on multiple ports, run them in parallel when possible and sensible (requires tracking dependencies between both targets and ports and figuring out the maximum reasonable parallelism, e.g. several ports can fetch at once on a fast connection but you only want one 'make -j8' at a time).
    211 
    212 * Difficulty: Challenging
    213 * Languages: Tcl, C
    214 * Potential mentors: TBD
    215 
    216 ==== Migrate muniversal into base (lipo merging) ==== #muniversal
    217 
    218 Integrate the [[source:trunk/dports/_resources/port1.0/group/muniversal-1.0.tcl|muniversal portgroup]] into base. Not just a direct copy-and-paste, but in a way that makes sense and preserves the way portfiles are expected to behave (which the current portgroup doesn't).
    219 
    220 * Difficulty: Medium
    221 * Languages: Tcl, C
    222 * Potential mentors: TBD
    223 
    224 ==== Improve fetching from version control ==== #fetchtypes
    225 
    226 Make cvs/svn/git/hg/bzr fetch types checkout into the distfiles dir and then export into the work dir, to [[ticket:16373|avoid having to re-fetch]]
    227 after cleaning the work directory.
    228 
    229 This task alone is most probably not enough for the whole Summer Of Code.
    230 
    231 * Difficulty: Easy
    232 * Languages: Tcl, C, bash
    233 * Potential mentors: larryv
    234 
    235 ==== App portgoup ==== #app
    236 Enhance the launching of GUI apps packaged by MacPorts:
    237 
    238  - Fix app icon bouncing on Dock after app launched (#40110)
    239  - Support multiple apps per port (#41681)
    240 
    241 * Difficulty: Easy
    242 * Languages: TCL, XML
    243 * Potential mentors: TBD
    244 
    245 
    246 {{{
    247 #!comment
    248 # This was just a wild idea by me. After reading it again, I am no longer sure if this is suitable as an idea. The compiler binary checks would be covered by a functioning trace mode already and environment variable checks are hard to implement (if possible at all).
    249 # However, I already typed it out now, so I leave it here for discussion with other mentors. --raimue@
    250 
    251 ==== Run basic checks on build systems ==== #buildcheck
    252 
    253 Some mistakes are very common on newly written ports, mostly because build systems do not always respect the usual conventions. While the port works for the initial port author, it may fail for others due to these mistakes. These could be checked for automatically to catch them before adding the port to the ports tree.
    254 
    255 First, a set of tests could be run on the extracted, patched (and configured) sources. For example, a possible check could include whether the given Makefile respects the CC/CPPFLAGS/CFLAGS/LDFLAGS environment variables, which is one of the most common mistakes. Often smaller projects just [UsingTheRightCompiler hardcode the compiler] to `cc` or even `gcc`. This could be checked for in various ways. One option would be to overwrite Makefiles rules to verify the passed parameters. Another option would be to use a custom compiler script as `CC` that checks the flags in question are always passed to the compiler by the build system and match those given in the Portfile (or the defaults). Other binaries such as `cc`/`gcc` need to be shadowed and invocation must raise an error.
    256 
    257 These checks would be included as a new option in existing commands, for example `port build --check`, or a new phase `prebuildcheck` to be run before the `build` phase. This mode could be enabled automatically with a flag in `macports.conf` for MacPorts developers.
    258 
    259 You will definitely need to come up with more ideas to fill the whole summer.
    260 
    261 * Classification: Easy to Hard
    262 * Languages: Tcl
    263 * Potential mentors: (raimue)
    264 }}}
    265 
    266 
    267 === Secondary tasks ===
    268 
    269 ==== Portfiles ==== #portfiles
    270 
    271 Sweep through all Portfiles and look for useful opportunities to add more built-in Tcl functions that make Portfiles more (usefully) terse, powerful, flexible or easier to write. I'm sure there is an entirely family of helper functions yet to be written here. This might also include porting additional packages to MacPorts and cleaning up or removing obsolete ports.
    272 
    273 * Classification: Medium
    274 * Language: Tcl
    275 * Potential mentors: larryv
     103=== Ideas ===
    276104
    277105==== Collect build statistics ==== #build-stats
     
    287115
    288116* Difficulty: Easy to medium
    289 * Languages: JSON, HTML, Pythor or any scripting language
     117* Languages: JSON, HTML, Python or any scripting language
    290118* Potential mentors: mojca
    291119
    292 ==== Documentation and website ==== #docs
    293 
    294 Improve MacPorts [query:status!=closed&component=guide|server/hosting|website|wiki documentation, website and Trac system]. Note that pure documentation proposals are not allowed by Google.
    295 
    296 * Difficulty: Easy to difficult
    297 * Languages: PHP, Python
    298 * Potential mentors: larryv
    299 
    300 ==== Shell environment ==== #shell-environment
    301 
    302 Add support for providing basic and port-provided environmental services to users in the `~/.profile`, `~/.cshrc`, and `~/.xinitrc` files, so that instead of manipulating the user's .profile to modify certain paths, the installer could append "`source /opt/local/etc/bash.rc`" to the end of a user's .profile file and that bash.rc would source all the files in `/opt/local/etc/bash.d`.
    303 
    304 This task alone is most probably not enough for the whole Summer Of Code.
    305 
    306 * Difficulty: Easy
    307 * Potential mentors: raimue
     120==== Managing Qt versions ==== #qt
     121
     122Fix issues in [query:status=assigned|new|reopened&port~=qt3|qt4|qt5 open tickets for Qt 3, Qt 4, and Qt 5], in particular allowing for concurrent installation of the various Qt versions (Note: co-installable ports for Qt 4.8.6, 5.3.2 and 5.4.1 have already been submitted to Trac).
     123
     124* Difficulty: Medium
     125* Language: Tcl, C++
     126* Potential mentors: michaelld
     127
     128==== Phase out dependency on Xcode ==== #xcode
     129
     130MacPorts currently requires a full Xcode installation, even though a lot of ports will install just fine with the Command Line Tools package only. Since we also have a number of ports that need Xcode to build, we cannot completely remove the Xcode dependency. Your task would be to provide a way for maintainers to easily identify ports that depend on Xcode and mark them as such, so MacPorts can warn users without Xcode installed that a port they want to install needs the full Xcode package.
     131
     132To achieve this, you can modify "trace mode", a `DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`-based sandbox to track whether a port has accessed files belonging to the Xcode package. If it does, your modifications should cause a warning to be printed suggesting the port maintainers to add `use_xcode yes` to the Portfile (unless of course, it is already there). You should also implement an error message if a user without Xcode installed tries to install a port that has `use_xcode yes` set.
     133
     134* Difficulty: Medium
     135* Languages: Tcl, C
     136* Potential mentors: cal
    308137
    309138==== Bump version and checksum of existing port ==== #bump
     
    320149* Difficulty: Easy
    321150* Languages: Tcl, C
    322 * Potential mentors: TBD
    323 
     151* Contact: raimue, l2dy
     152
     153==== Improve startupitem code ==== #startupitem
     154
     155MacPorts has the ability to automatically generate startup items for the current platform. For OS X, these are plist files for launchd which will be installed as `/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.*.plist`. The current code would need a little care and could make use of options which have been added in recent releases of launchd.
     156
     157Features that could be useful include (but are not limited to):
     158 - Not using daemondo if the daemon works fine under launchd without it
     159 - Ability to install multiple plists
     160 - Support for LaunchAgents as well as LaunchDaemons
     161 - Installing plists in ~/Library for non-root installs if the user wants
     162 - only modify specific XML tags to avoid clobbering additions by user
     163 - Support startupitems in standalone binary packages (currently a brutal hack is used to include daemondo in such packages, see #43648)
     164
     165* Difficulty: Easy
     166* Languages: Tcl, C
     167* Potential mentors: larryv, pixilla
     168
     169==== Speed up trace mode ==== #tracemode
     170
     171Trace mode is a library preloading-based sandbox used to hide files that a port does not depend on or that are not part of a standard system's installation (such as `/usr/local`). This can avoid problems due to incompatible user-installed software and avoid "automagic" dependencies and increase the reproducibility of builds.
     172
     173Unfortunately, enabling trace mode adds a significant performance penalty to the build process. However, the trace mode code can certainly be optimized using appropriate cache data structures, such as a modified [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie Trie]. Your task would be to identify the performance bottlenecks, draft appropriate caching data structures and implement them.
     174
     175* Difficulty: Medium to Hard
     176* Programming languages: Tcl, C
     177* Potential mentors: cal
     178
     179==== Auto-detection of build dependencies ==== #dependencies-gen
     180
     181When creating a new portfile one of the problems is always the specification of the complete (and preferably minimal) list of build dependencies, especially when one starts with a complete install where most dependencies are already available.
     182
     183It is possible to invert the trace mode logic so that it detects all files a configure and/or build process accesses, in ${prefix} but outside of the port's build directory. This information can then be used to generate a dependency tree and information from the registry can then be used to simplify that tree so that it only lists direct dependencies. Can be combined with the above project. Consult mentor.
     184
     185* Difficulty: Medium to Easy
     186* Programming languages: Tcl, C
     187* Potential mentors: cal
     188
     189==== Improve fetching from version control ==== #fetchtypes
     190
     191Make cvs/svn/git/hg/bzr fetch types checkout into the distfiles dir and then export into the work dir, to [[ticket:16373|avoid having to re-fetch]] after cleaning the work directory.
     192"`fetch.type svn`" is inefficient in that it checks out a new working copy every time, directly to the work area. That would be like a normal port downloading the distfile every time. Instead, we should check out a working copy to that port's distpath, and then in the extract phase we should `svn export` it to the work area.
     193
     194Some checks will be needed in the fetch phase to ensure that an existing working copy:
     195
     196* has no modifications: check `svn status`. Ideally, we would try to clean up the working copy, for example by `svn revert`-ing modified or added or deleted files, and then in a second `svn status` run, delete any unversioned files. But it's already an improvement if we just discard the working copy if `svn status --ignore-externals` produces any output.
     197* is from the right URL: check `svn info`: check if the "URL" is the one we want. If not, check that the "Repository Root" is a substring of the repository we want. If yes, try to `svn switch` to the URL and revision we want; if not, discard the working copy.
     198
     199* Difficulty: Easy
     200* Languages: Tcl, C, bash
     201* Contact: larryv
     202
     203==== Generating Portfiles ====
     204
     205There are multiple tasks related to the generation of Portfiles. Some of these may not be enough work for a full summer project, so they could be combined while writing proposals freely when the applying student wants to.
     206
     207===== Perl modules integration from CPAN ===== #cpan2port
     208
     209There has been [[browser:contrib/cpan2port|an attempt]] to write a script for automatic generation of Portfiles from CPAN. This would simplify the maintenance of Perl modules in MacPorts. Revive this project and finish the script or rewrite it.
     210
     211Resources:
     212* http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/perl/g-cpan.xml
     213* http://search.cpan.org/~bingos/CPANPLUS-0.9001/bin/cpan2dist
     214* http://packages.debian.org/stable/dh-make-perl
     215
     216* Difficulty: Easy to medium
     217* Languages: Perl, probably Tcl
     218* Potential mentors: pixilla
     219
     220===== Read packages from other various package managers ===== #foo2port
     221
     222As with the cpan2port proposal above, and with the previous [wiki:pypi2port pypi2port] GSoC entry, except with other package managers, such as [http://opam.ocamlpro.com/ opam] for ocaml packages, [http://www.haskell.org/cabal/ cabal] for Haskell, [http://luarocks.org/ luarocks] for Lua, [https://npmjs.org/ npm] for node.js, and so on.
     223
     224* Classification: Medium
     225* Languages: Tcl, C, OCaml, Haskell, Lua, Node.js, etc.
     226* Potential mentors: pixilla
     227
     228=== More Ideas/Hints for your own ideas ===
     229
     230==== Shell environment ==== #shell-environment
     231
     232Add support for providing basic and port-provided environmental services to users in the `~/.profile`, `~/.cshrc`, and `~/.xinitrc` files, so that instead of manipulating the user's .profile to modify certain paths, the installer could append "`source /opt/local/etc/bash.rc`" to the end of a user's .profile file and that bash.rc would source all the files in `/opt/local/etc/bash.d`.
     233
     234* Difficulty: Easy
     235* Potential mentors: raimue
     236
     237==== Implement fakeroot functionality for destroot phase ==== #fakeroot
     238
     239Currently, MacPorts uses root privileges in the destroot phase. That should be replaced by a system that runs as the macports user but intercepts all operations that would require root privileges (chown/chmod/etc.) and record the resulting permissions in a database.
     240
     241The existing functionality of trace mode in darwintracelib1.0 could be leveraged for this task.
     242
     243* Difficulty: Medium
     244* Languages: Tcl, C
     245* Potential mentors: jeremyhu
     246
     247==== MacPorts port for self-management ==== #self-management
     248
     249The MacPorts port should be the source for updating a user’s MacPorts installation.
     250
     251Currently, the MacPorts port is used to build the .pkg installer for MacPorts that is used for the initial installation of MacPorts, and port uses the “selfupdate” mechanism for maintaining the MacPorts installation. The selfupdate mechanism is (at least not documented as such) not accessible through the MacPorts API and does not use the MacPorts mechanisms for maintaining ports.
     252
     253* Difficulty: Challenging
     254* Languages: Tcl, C
     255* Potential mentors: TBD
     256
     257==== Parallel execution ==== #parallel
     258
     259When an action will run targets on multiple ports, run them in parallel when possible and sensible (requires tracking dependencies between both targets and ports and figuring out the maximum reasonable parallelism, e.g. several ports can fetch at once on a fast connection but you only want one 'make -j8' at a time).
     260
     261* Difficulty: Challenging
     262* Languages: Tcl, C
     263* Potential mentors: TBD
     264
     265==== Migrate muniversal into base (lipo merging) ==== #muniversal
     266
     267Integrate the [[source:trunk/dports/_resources/port1.0/group/muniversal-1.0.tcl|muniversal portgroup]] into base. Not just a direct copy-and-paste, but in a way that makes sense and preserves the way portfiles are expected to behave (which the current portgroup doesn't).
     268
     269* Difficulty: Medium
     270* Languages: Tcl, C
     271* Potential mentors: TBD
     272
     273==== App portgoup ==== #app
     274Enhance the launching of GUI apps packaged by MacPorts:
     275
     276 - Fix app icon bouncing on Dock after app launched (#40110)
     277 - Support multiple apps per port (#41681)
     278
     279* Difficulty: Easy
     280* Languages: TCL, XML
     281* Potential mentors: TBD
     282
     283==== Portfiles ==== #portfiles
     284
     285Sweep through all Portfiles and look for useful opportunities to add more built-in Tcl functions that make Portfiles more (usefully) terse, powerful, flexible or easier to write. I'm sure there is an entirely family of helper functions yet to be written here. This might also include porting additional packages to MacPorts and cleaning up or removing obsolete ports.
     286
     287* Classification: Medium
     288* Language: Tcl
     289* Potential mentors: larryv
     290
     291==== Documentation and website ==== #docs
     292
     293Improve MacPorts [query:status!=closed&component=guide|server/hosting|website|wiki documentation, website and Trac system]. Note that pure documentation proposals are not allowed by Google.
     294
     295* Difficulty: Easy to difficult
     296* Languages: PHP, Python
     297* Potential mentors: larryv
     298
     299==== MacPorts statistics ==== #mpstats
     300
     301Enhance collection and reporting of inventory of ports installed by participating users: StatisticsIdeas
     302
     303* Difficulty: Medium
     304* Language: TBD
     305* Potential mentors: TBD
     306
     307{{{
     308#!comment
     309# This was just a wild idea by me. After reading it again, I am no longer sure if this is suitable for an idea. The compiler binary checks would be covered by a functioning trace mode already and environment variable checks are hard to implement (if possible at all).
     310# However, I already typed it out now, so I leave it here for discussion with other mentors. --raimue@
     311
     312==== Run basic checks on build systems ==== #buildcheck
     313
     314Some mistakes are very common on newly written ports, mostly because build systems do not always respect the usual conventions. While the port works for the initial port author, it may fail for others due to these mistakes. These could be checked for automatically to catch them before adding the port to the ports tree.
     315
     316First, a set of tests could be run on the extracted, patched (and configured) sources. For example, a possible check could include whether the given Makefile respects the CC/CPPFLAGS/CFLAGS/LDFLAGS environment variables, which is one of the most common mistakes. Often smaller projects just [UsingTheRightCompiler hardcode the compiler] to `cc` or even `gcc`. This could be checked for in various ways. One option would be to overwrite Makefiles rules to verify the passed parameters. Another option would be to use a custom compiler script as `CC` that checks the flags in question are always passed to the compiler by the build system and match those given in the Portfile (or the defaults). Other binaries such as `cc`/`gcc` need to be shadowed and invocation must raise an error.
     317
     318These checks would be included as a new option in existing commands, for example `port build --check`, or a new phase `prebuildcheck` to be run before the `build` phase. This mode could be enabled automatically with a flag in `macports.conf` for MacPorts developers.
     319
     320You will definitely need to come up with more ideas to fill the whole summer.
     321
     322* Classification: Easy to Hard
     323* Languages: Tcl
     324* Potential mentors: (raimue)
     325}}}
    324326
    325327{{{
     
    330332==== Logging ==== #logging
    331333
    332 Currently MacPorts has no notion of logging of build activities of a given port or sets of ports. When a build is attempted but an error keeps it from completing, there's no way to track the problem other than the build progress that was output to the terminal, if verbose mode was requested in the first place. Otherwise, the build environment has to be pruned and the build attempted once again to even get a look at the precise error message. This is particularly problematic when automated builds are attempted, since there's usually no one around to have a look at the failure spew. An infrastructure to remedy this situation and endow MacPorts with a rich set of logging capabilities has to be developed to open up the door to true automated build runs of large sets of ports and thus to packaging of binaries, since with logging we'd have a fully reliable way of catching, reporting and processing of all sorts of fetch/configure/build/destroot/install/etc errors.
    333 
    334 This could be extended with the interaction with a server side application like MPWA that could consume these logs (read MPWA proposal). A more detailed draft of this task can be found on the LoggingProposal page.
     334Currently, MacPorts has no notion of logging of build activities of a given port or sets of ports. When a build is attempted but an error keeps it from completing, there's no way to track the problem other than the build progress that was output to the terminal, if the verbose mode was requested in the first place. Otherwise, the build environment has to be pruned and the build attempted once again to even get a look at the precise error message. This is particularly problematic when automated builds are attempted since there's usually no one around to have a look at the failure spew. An infrastructure to remedy this situation and endow MacPorts with a rich set of logging capabilities has to be developed to open up the door to truly automated build runs of large sets of ports and thus to packaging of binaries, since with logging we'd have a fully reliable way of catching, reporting and processing of all sorts of fetch/configure/build/destroot/install/etc errors.
     335
     336This could be extended with the interaction with a server-side application like MPWA that could consume these logs (read MPWA proposal). A more detailed draft of this task can be found on the LoggingProposal page.
    335337
    336338Classification: medium task to relatively challenging[[BR]]
     
    339341}}}
    340342
    341 ==== MacPorts statistics ==== #mpstats
    342 
    343 Enhance collection and reporting of inventory of ports installed by participating users: StatisticsIdeas
    344 
    345 * Difficulty: Medium
    346 * Language: TBD
    347 * Potential mentors: TBD
    348 
    349 
    350343== Contacting us == #contact
    351344There are several ways to contact us:
    352  - Dropping a mail to the [MailingLists MacPorts-dev mailing list] will get you most attention. Note that you have to be subscribed to the list in order to send mail to it. We recommend you create a filter matching the header line `List-Id: macports-dev.lists.macports.org` and sort all mails matching this filter into a separate folder. When sending inquiries about Google Summer of Code, we would welcome if you included "GSoC" in the subject of your mail.
    353  - You can get quick feedback and less formal discussion by joining the `#macports` channel on the [http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml Freenode IRC network]. You'll need an IRC client to do so – [http://colloquy.info/ Colloquy] is a popular choice on OS X. Please note that due to timezones and day jobs you might not receive an answer right away. Most users will read your messages when they return and answer as soon as they can. Be prepared to wait a few hours.
     345 - Dropping a mail to the [MailingLists MacPorts-dev mailing list] will get you most attention. Note that you have to be subscribed to the list in order to send mail to it. We recommend you create a filter matching the header line `List-Id: macports-dev.lists.macports.org` and sort all the emails matching this filter into a separate folder. When sending inquiries about Google Summer of Code, we would welcome if you included "GSoC" in the subject of your mail.
     346 - You can get quick feedback and less formal discussion by joining the `#macports` channel on the [http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml Freenode IRC network]. You'll need an IRC client to do so – [http://colloquy.info/ Colloquy] is a popular choice for OS X. Please note that due to timezones and day jobs you might not receive an answer right away. Most users will read your messages when they return and answer as soon as they can. Be prepared to wait a few hours.
    354347 - Feel free to contact any potential mentor via email directly. You can get the email address by appending `@macports.org` to the handle listed in [#Mentors] above.
    355348
    356349In general, don't hesitate to contact us – we're here to help you and eager to mentor motivated students in this year's GSoC!
    357350
    358 == Contact person ==
     351== Admins ==
    359352
    360353Append `@macports.org` for email.
    361354
    362355||= Name =||= Email =||= Area =||
    363 ||= Jackson Isaac =|| ijackson || Backup Admin/Mentor ||
     356||= Jackson Isaac =|| ijackson || Backup Admin||
    364357||= Umesh Singla =|| umeshksingla || Administrator ||
    365358