[[!meta title="Google Summer of Code 2010"]]

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DragonFly BSD is planning to participate (pending acceptance) in the Google Summer of Code program for 2010.


Have a look at our SoC pages from [[2008|docs/developer/GoogleSoC2008/]] and [[2009|docs/developer/gsoc2009]] to get an overview about prior year's projects.  The [Projects Page](/docs/developer/ProjectsPage/) is also a potential source of ideas.


For more details on Google's Summer of Code: [Google's SoC page](http://socghop.appspot.com/)


# Project ideas

1. VFS Quota System
* Kernelland quota support in the VFS layer
* Filesystem-agnostic quota support tools for userland

1. Ultra Fast Boot & Shutdown Speed
* Be competitive with GNU/Linux, OSX & MS Windows refinements in this area.

1. Graphics Kernel Memory Manager Support ( GEM )
* Support dealing with graphics NUMA in kernel space for modern graphics hardware
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Execution_Manager

1. Make DragonFly NUMA-aware 

* Parse related ACPI tables 
* NUMA-aware memory allocation

1. Security/Hardening improvements
* Encrypted swap/filesystems (From NetBSD or OpenBSD?)
* Extended toolchain hardening
* NX/XD support in kernel (at least for 64 bit kernels, DF doesn’t support PAE IIRC)
* More use of randomization (for example in PIDs)
* Port OpenBSD’s most recent malloc implementation as an option 
* Use blf instead of md5 for passwords etc. (already possible, but not default)

1. Data Integrity Framework Implementation
* Something akin to what was done for Linux: http://oss.oracle.com/projects/data-integrity/

1. Volume Management based on NetBSD's port of LVM2

    NetBSD reimplemented Linux's device mapper (currently only implementing
the linear, zero and error targets; Linux has support for a variety of
targets, including crypt, stripe, snap, multipath) as dm(4). Device mapper
provides the functionality on which to implement volume management; NetBSD
has imported LVM2 (which is GPL), but it is possible to create different
tools for volume management (e.g. IBM's EVMS was also built on top of device
mapper).

    The goal of this project is to port both the kernel code, dm(4), and the
LVM2 userspace libraries and tools from NetBSD. If time remains, the
student should also implement a proof of concept "stripe" target or, for the
more ambitious, a "crypt" target.

    A possible roadmap for this project would be

    1. Port the dm(4) code

        This code uses proplib instead of binary ioctls for communicating with
userspace. Either port proplib, or convert the code to use ioctls.

    1. Port the userspace tools

        Integrate the tools in our source tree using a separate vendor branch, as
is normally done for contrib software (see development(7)). Make any
DragonFlyBSD-specific changes necessary.

    1. (Optional) Implement either a "stripe" target or a crypt target.

        The stripe target must be designed with robustness and extensibility in
mind, though it is not required to go all the way. It should be flexible
enough to allow for different RAID level implementations (at least 0, 1
and 5). Additionally, it should be possible to keep an internal (i.e. part
of the volume) log to speed up resyncing and parity checking. Implementing
those features would be ideal, but is not required.

        The crypt target must allow for different ciphers and cipher parameters and
should make use of our in-kernel crypto infrastructure. It is probably
necessary to do the encryption asynchronously which will require extending
the current infrastructure.

1. Port More of a Range of Modern WiFi Drivers
* iwn - Intel WiFi Link 4965/5000/1000/6000 IEEE 802.11a/g/n wireless network devices
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_wireless_drivers

1. Make DragonflyBSD Tickless
* By default, the clock cyclic fires at 100 Hz, regardless of whether or not any timeouts/callouts are scheduled to fire/expire. This is suboptimal from a power efficiency standpoint, as at least one of the system's CPUs never become quiescent/idle enough to be brought into a low power state.
This work involves re-implementing the services presently provided by clock() in a tickless (or event based) fashion, eliminating the need for the system to "wake up", only to realize that there's nothing to do on an otherwise idle system.
* http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+tickless/lbolt

1. Make the DragonflyBSD Dispatcher Power-aware
* CPU power management as it it implemented today is relatively isolated from the rest of the system. As such, it is forced to periodically poll to measure the utilization of the system's CPU resources.
* This project extends the kernel's existing topology aware scheduling facility to bring "power domain" awareness to the dispatcher. With this awareness in place, the dispatcher can implement coalescence dispatching policy to consolidate utilization onto a smaller subset of CPU domains, freeing up other domains to be power managed. In addition to being domain aware, the dispatcher will also tend to prefer to utilize domains already running at higher power/performance states...this will increase the duration and extent to which domains can remain quiescent, improving the kernel's ability to take advantage of features like deep C-states. Because the dispatcher will track power domain utilization along the way, it can drive active domain state changes in an event driven fashion, eliminating the need for the CPUPM subsystem to poll.
* http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+tesla/CPUPM

1. Create a faster, more transparent, and more robust alternative to pkgsrc similar to the now defunct pkgjam, which has the three main features:

   1. Dependency Independence: If packages B and C both rely on package A, and you want to upgrade package B, which requires upgrading package A, need you upgrade package C, too? Logically, no. Technically, no, too, as long as you're prepared to have two versions of package A installed (one for B and one for C).

   1. Relational Database for package metadata:  All package metadata -- build-time options and dependencies, licences, everything you need to know to build a package -- is stored in the database. So is information about packages you installed and the options you built them with (and their dependencies, of course). The database also has all your preferred options, settings that influence how packages are built. 

   1. New Build Tool: A new build tool is what's invoked by the user to build and install packages. It relies on the database to decide what to do, and relies on make(1) to do what it does best: build and installpackages.

(please add)