[asterisk-dev] Google Summer of Code 2009

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Monday 09 March 2009 11:05:48 am Mark Michelson wrote:
> Russell Bryant wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > The Asterisk project participated in the Google Summer of Code program
> > in 2005, but has not since then.  I would like to apply again this year.
> >   I think it is an amazing opportunity to reach out to new developers
> > and get some code written that we all want done, but have not had a
> > chance to get to.
> >
> > http://code.google.com/soc/
> >
> > If we want to make this happen, we have a couple of things that we need
> > to come up with as soon as possible.  Mentoring organizations must
> > complete their application for the program this week.
> >
> > 1) We need to determine who is willing to serve as a mentor from the
> > Asterisk project.  Mentors will be paired up with a student and will
> > provide guidance to help the student bring their project to completion.
> >   Without commitments from mentors, we can not participate in the
> > program.
> >
> > Obviously, an appropriate pairing of a mentor to a student is important.
> >   It's acceptable to say, "I am willing to be a mentor, provided that it
> > is for a student working on a project in my area of expertise."
> >
> > If you think you would be interested, please let me know!  Feel free to
> > respond on this list, or to me directly.
> >
> > 2) We must build a suggested project list.  When students apply for the
> > program, they can submit a proposal for implementing one of our
> > suggested projects, or another project of their choosing.  Projects for
> > this list should be appropriate in scope for a college student not yet
> > familiar with the code base to implement in a Summer.
> >
> > I'm going to create a file in svn to maintain our project ideas list:
> >
> >   - svn/asterisk/trunk/doc/google-soc2009-ideas.txt
> >
> > To kick of the list of ideas, here are a couple of high level thoughts:
> >
> > a) I think we could break up the "PineMango" project into multiple
> > suggested projects.
> >
> > b) John Todd and others had some great ideas regarding security in
> > Asterisk at the last developer conference that could be turned into
> > suggested projects.
> >
> > If you have some thoughts about other projects to add to the list,
> > again, please let me know, and I'll add them to our ideas list.
> >
> > Thanks!
>
> Firstly, let me state that I would be willing to mentor a student depending
> on what area of the code they choose to work with. I can work with most
> areas in Asterisk. The areas I would *not* feel comfortable working in are
> channel drivers other than chan_sip. Any other place in Asterisk I either
> know well enough or could learn quickly enough to be able to mentor
> effectively.
>
> As far as code project ideas go, here are some suggestions (listed roughly
> in order of preference):
>
> * ast_storage: For those not in the know, this was an attempt to make
> several storage backends, primarily for use in app_voicemail but
> potentially useful for other purposes, too. I think this could make a
> decent project for a student because the code is already partially written,
> app_voicemail needs some major cleanup with regards to how it handles
> various storage destinations, and unfortunately, this just isn't something
> that is likely to get tackled by anyone else any time soon.
>
> * manager2/managergames: These are existing branches designed to get
> manager events converted to internal Asterisk events. While I am suggesting
> this as a project, I would like to get Olle's approval first since such a
> project could encroach on his managergames ideas. This is another project
> that will be great and useful but is not likely to be worked on by others
> due to other projects they're working on.
>
> * Transaction support for chan_sip. Pretty much self-explanatory. Would
> help get rid of several known bugs and would make the channel driver much
> more logical overall.
>
> * Anything to help regarding automated testing of Asterisk. Perhaps some
> sort of addition to Matt Nicholson's asttest branch? I'm not really sure
> that this is really in the spirit of GSoC though.
>
> Other potential places to browse for ideas are Olle's
> http://asteriskideas.org site and the voip-info wiki.

I would also be interested in mentoring a student.  Among other projects, we
might want a student to change the way verbose logging in Asterisk works, to
allow a constant level to always be logged to a particular logfile, without
regard for the console verbosity.  Currently, if a PBX admin changes the
verbosity on a remote console, it not only affects all consoles, but it also
affects the messages which end up in the log.  An ideal solution would allow
a default verbosity to be specified per remote console and for the logs and
allow various consoles' verbosity to be altered independently without
affecting the information sent to the logfiles.

-- 
Tilghman