[GSoC 2026 Inquiry] Refactoring global state

Hi Christian, Karthik, Justin.. and Git community,

My name is Tian Yuchen. I am an undergraduate year 1 student who's new to the Git community. I've been hanging around the community for over a month now, contributing almost every day. I really love the vibe here!

I'm quite interested in applying for the GSoC project "Refactoring in order to reduce Git's global state":

Coincidentally, just as the new idea list for this year was released these past few days, I've been working on a patch that has some connections to this project. (setup.c: handling named pipes/FIFOs during git directory discovery, currently in v4). Indeed, based on my experience, this requires tremendous patience, but I'm more than willing to give it a try.

I understand that removing global state is a massive, multi-year effort. I assume the goal of the GSoC project is not to finish everything, but to pick a specific area or a set of related modules and migrate them to use 'struct repository' explicitly.

My Question:

Do you have a specific module or subsystem in mind that you would like to prioritize for this summer?

For example, would focusing on 'environment.c' (as mentioned in the idea list) be the primary target, or are there other areas (like 'config.c' or 'setup.c') that are currently blocking other major features?

I would love to align my proposal with the community's current priorities. Thanks for your time!

Regards,

Yuchen