Re: Projects for the next Outreachy round

From: Victoria Dye <vdye@github.com>
Date: Sep 26, 2023, 17:18 UTC
Message-ID: <1c12ac0a-5e45-bb27-c452-250ffd4b9320@github.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAP8UFD1bsez-eMis5yH7Esds+LkhMnj0qTUMFPL1tRuDv2fiPw@mail.gmail.com>

Christian Couder wrote:

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> About the "More Sparse Index Integrations" Shuqi worked on, mentored
> by Victoria, I am likely not the best person to mentor it, but I think
> I could manage. It would be nice though if I got an idea about what
> should be done next and how much work is left in general in this area.
> (Shuqi's GSoC final report at
> https://cheskaqiqi.github.io/2023/08/22/Final/ doesn't talk much about
> this.) Perhaps even if Shuqi is continuing to work on the project,
> there is still work that could be done in parallel on other commands
> than the ones he is working on.

To be honest, I'd recommend against using "More Sparse Index Integrations" as a project again - I was actually going to suggest "retiring" the project after this past GSoC term. The remaining commands are all fairly complex, to the point that they'd be challenging even for someone that's done a lot of sparse index work.

All that said, if someone is *really* interested in this project, you might be able to get it to work. You'll probably want to limit the scope to one command and make sure there's a strong emphasis placed on testing. Sparse index integrations can introduce a lot of subtle bugs (e.g. the one Shuqi found in 'diff' [1]), and a buggy command is worse for users than lacking sparse index compatibility.

I hope that helps!
- Victoria

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/20230811142211.4547-3-cheskaqiqi@gmail.com/

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> 
> Sorry for the late request, but please let me know soon about this.
> 
> Thanks,
> Christian.