threads / discuss / 64818

Git project and GSoC 2026

Subject: Git project and GSoC 2026

## tl;dr

19 messages between Jan 16, 2026 and Feb 22, 2026.

replies: 18people: 5as markdown or json

Christian Couder· Jan 16, 2026, 11:06 UTC · lore
Hi everyone,

The application period for mentoring organizations to participate in GSoC 2026 is from January 19 to February 3. Let's try to anticipate a bit and decide soon if the Git project wants to participate.

If we want to participate, we need (co-)mentors, org-admins, projects and micro-projects ideas, and we need to update existing pages or create new ones on the Git Developer Pages (git.github.io) website (or on git-scm.org if we want to switch this to it now). Please chime in if you are interested.

About (co-)mentors and org-admins, Karthik, Justin, Siddharth and me have already expressed their interest in (co-)mentoring in internal GitLab discussions. I am willing to be an org-admin too.

The Git team at GitLab is also willing to manage Slack discussions channels for (co-)mentors, org-admins and helpers, and then for accepted contributors too, in the same way as for GSoC 2025.

Thanks, Christian.

Lucas Seiki Oshiro· Jan 19, 2026, 00:44 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

> Hi everyone,
Hi, Christian!
> Please chime in if you are interested.

I've just finished my master's and I still don't know what I'll be doing in the rest of this year, so I can't guarantee that I'll be able to be a co-mentor. But I'll be glad to help in the Developer Pages.

> About (co-)mentors and org-admins, Karthik, Justin, Siddharth and me
> have already expressed their interest in (co-)mentoring in internal
> GitLab discussions. I am willing to be an org-admin too.
A really good team!
> Thanks,
> Christian.
Thanks!
Christian Couder· Jan 19, 2026, 08:34 UTC · re: Lucas Seiki Oshiro · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi Lucas,

On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 1:44 AM Lucas Seiki Oshiro <lucasseikioshiro@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've just finished my master's and I still don't know what I'll be
> doing in the rest of this year, so I can't guarantee that I'll be
> able to be a co-mentor. But I'll be glad to help in the Developer
> Pages.
Thanks, I will add you to the Slack channel.
Kaartic Sivaraam· Jan 22, 2026, 05:08 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi Christian,
Thank you for initiating the discussion.
On 16/01/26 16:36, Christian Couder wrote:
Show 5 quoted lines
> 
> The application period for mentoring organizations to participate in
> GSoC 2026 is from January 19 to February 3. Let's try to anticipate a
> bit and decide soon if the Git project wants to participate.
>
Indeed.
Show 6 quoted lines
> If we want to participate, we need (co-)mentors, org-admins, projects
> and micro-projects ideas, and we need to update existing pages or
> create new ones on the Git Developer Pages (git.github.io) website (or
> on git-scm.org if we want to switch this to it now). Please chime in
> if you are interested.
>
I would be glad to help as an org-Admin this year too. I could act as a fallback mentor in case any mentor / co-mentor becomes unavailable during a particular period of the program.
I also Cc-ed Chandra Pratap as they expressed interest to be a co-mentor before. 
> About (co-)mentors and org-admins, Karthik, Justin, Siddharth and me
> have already expressed their interest in (co-)mentoring in internal
> GitLab discussions. I am willing to be an org-admin too.
>
Wonderful to see that we already have 5 potential mentors! Keep them coming! Also, it would be nice to hear potential idea suggestions too. The more the merrier :-)
> The Git team at GitLab is also willing to manage Slack discussions
> channels for (co-)mentors, org-admins and helpers, and then for
> accepted contributors too, in the same way as for GSoC 2025.
>
Cool!

-- Sivaraam

Christian Couder· Jan 22, 2026, 07:33 UTC · re: Kaartic Sivaraam · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi Kaartic,

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 6:08 AM Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 16/01/26 16:36, Christian Couder wrote:
Show 9 quoted lines
> > If we want to participate, we need (co-)mentors, org-admins, projects
> > and micro-projects ideas, and we need to update existing pages or
> > create new ones on the Git Developer Pages (git.github.io) website (or
> > on git-scm.org if we want to switch this to it now). Please chime in
> > if you are interested.
>
> I would be glad to help as an org-Admin this year too. I could act as a fallback mentor in case any mentor / co-mentor becomes unavailable during a particular period of the program.
>
> I also Cc-ed Chandra Pratap as they expressed interest to be a co-mentor before.
Great, thanks! I will add you to the Slack channel.
Show 6 quoted lines
> > About (co-)mentors and org-admins, Karthik, Justin, Siddharth and me
> > have already expressed their interest in (co-)mentoring in internal
> > GitLab discussions. I am willing to be an org-admin too.
> >
>
> Wonderful to see that we already have 5 potential mentors! Keep them coming! Also, it would be nice to hear potential idea suggestions too. The more the merrier :-)
Yeah, project idea suggestions are very welcome.
Kaartic Sivaraam· Jan 28, 2026, 20:28 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi all,
On 22 January 2026 1:03:26 pm IST, Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Wonderful to see that we already have 5 potential mentors! Keep them coming! Also, it would be nice to hear potential idea suggestions too. The more the merrier :-)
>
>Yeah, project idea suggestions are very welcome.
Just a gentle nudge for the project ideas. The deadline to apply for GSoC is Feb 3 18:00 UTC. We need the ideas page ready a couple of days before it at least.
Feel free to chime in to suggest ideas that would be achievable by someone new-ish to the community. If you're doubtful whether an idea would be relevant for GSoC, feel free to share the same and we can discuss it.
The same goes for micro project suggestions. Feel free to share new ones that could be added to the following microprojects page:
<https://git.github.io/SoC-2025-Microprojects/>
-- 
Sivaraam

Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
Christian Couder· Jan 29, 2026, 10:20 UTC · re: Kaartic Sivaraam · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 9:28 PM Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just a gentle nudge for the project ideas. The deadline to apply for GSoC is Feb 3 18:00 UTC. We need the ideas page ready a couple of days before it at least.
Thanks for the nudge!
> Feel free to chime in to suggest ideas that would be achievable by someone new-ish to the community. If you're doubtful whether an idea would be relevant for GSoC, feel free to share the same and we can discuss it.
Here are ideas I came up with:
1) Continue the current work on removing global variables.
2) Finish, and then maybe improve, some work Eric Ju started a long
time ago on `git cat-file`.
3) Improve git-backfill, or maybe a different command, so it can
remove large local blobs when they are available on a promisor remote
(for clients who want to get back disk space).
4) Implement some kind of fetch order when more than 1 promisor remote
is configured (this order could be passed from servers to clients
through the promisor-remote protocol to make sure the fetches happen
in the optimal order).
5) Make the promisor-remote protocol useful when the server wants to
advertise "better-connected" remotes (not just remotes the server
uses) as Junio suggested some time ago (see
Documentation/gitprotocol-v2.adoc).
6) Improve `git repo info` so it can show more information than now.
7) Improve `git repo structure` so it can show more stats than now.
8) Improve fast-export/fast-import and maybe git-repo-filter regarding
commit and/or tag signatures. This might conflict with GitLab people
(including me) possibly working on that soon though.

I would be willing to mentor any of them, but I don't have much knowledge on `git repo`, so I think it makes more sense for me to avoid 6) and 7).

Lucas Seiki Oshiro· Jan 29, 2026, 20:41 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

> 6) Improve `git repo info` so it can show more information than now.
From my side, I have these features in my local backlog:
- remove the dependency on `the_repository`
- use the category as key
- add the path-related values (copied from git-rev-parse "Options for
  Files"):
  - git-dir
  - common-dir
  - toplevel
  - superproject-working-tree
- add more values currently obtained through
`git rev-parse --git-path`:
  - grafts file
  - index file
  - objects directory
  - hooks directory
  - git-prefix
  - other paths that are adjusted by update_common_dir()

I already started to add those path-related values [1], but I think that the major problem is deciding whether we should use relative or absolute paths.

I also think that we have room for other information that we retrieve through commands other than git-rev-parse.

> 7) Improve `git repo structure` so it can show more stats than now.

I don't know Justin's future plans for this command, but the idea was to bring some functionality from git-sizer [2] to Git.

> I would be willing to mentor any of them, but I don't have much
> knowledge on `git repo`, so I think it makes more sense for me to
> avoid 6) and 7).

If you want, I can share with you some information about git-repo-info.

I really appreciate initiatives like git-repo-structure and git-history that bring features from other tools that make Git easier to use. This week, I was talked independently with two friends about how git-blame can be misleading sometimes since it only shows the last change in a line. One of them really likes `git log -S` for "blaming" strings and thinks that it's a too powerful feature that is hidden inside git-log. The other one showed me Cregit [3], a tool for blaming based on tokens instead of lines. A "string blame" or a "token blame" could be a nice GSoC project (but maybe for future editions).

[1] https://github.com/lucasoshiro/git/compare/master...repo-info-path/ [2] https://github.com/github/git-sizer [3] https://github.com/cregit/cregit

Christian Couder· Feb 3, 2026, 09:37 UTC · re: Lucas Seiki Oshiro · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi Lucas and everyone,

On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 9:41 PM Lucas Seiki Oshiro <lucasseikioshiro@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 29 quoted lines
>
>
> > 6) Improve `git repo info` so it can show more information than now.
>
> From my side, I have these features in my local backlog:
>
> - remove the dependency on `the_repository`
> - use the category as key
> - add the path-related values (copied from git-rev-parse "Options for
>   Files"):
>   - git-dir
>   - common-dir
>   - toplevel
>   - superproject-working-tree
> - add more values currently obtained through
> `git rev-parse --git-path`:
>   - grafts file
>   - index file
>   - objects directory
>   - hooks directory
>   - git-prefix
>   - other paths that are adjusted by update_common_dir()
>
> I already started to add those path-related values [1], but I think
> that the major problem is deciding whether we should use relative or
> absolute paths.
>
> I also think that we have room for other information that we retrieve
> through commands other than git-rev-parse.

Thanks a lot for this. I have used it in the new SoC-2026-Ideas page I just added:

https://git.github.io/SoC-2026-Ideas/
It contains the 3 following projects:
1) Refactoring in order to reduce Git's global state
2) Improve the new `git repo` command
3) Complete and extend the `remote-object-info` command for `git cat-file`

I have removed myself from the potential mentors of project 2), where I used material from your email.

Otherwise everyone who said they were interested in (co-)mentoring should be listed as a potential mentor of each of these projects. Feel free to send MRs or just email requests and I will remove you.

We can still add more projects (and potential (co-)mentors) or maybe split project 2) into 2 separate projects (one for `git repo info` and the other one for `git repo structure`). We can also refine the projects.

Feel free to send PRs or patches!
Show 6 quoted lines
> > I would be willing to mentor any of them, but I don't have much
> > knowledge on `git repo`, so I think it makes more sense for me to
> > avoid 6) and 7).
>
> If you want, I can share with you some information about
> git-repo-info.
Thanks but I prefer to plan to mentor another project for now.
Show 10 quoted lines
> I really appreciate initiatives like git-repo-structure and
> git-history that bring features from other tools that make Git
> easier to use. This week, I was talked independently with two
> friends about how git-blame can be misleading sometimes since it
> only shows the last change in a line. One of them really likes
> `git log -S` for "blaming" strings and thinks that it's a too
> powerful feature that is hidden inside git-log. The other one
> showed me Cregit [3], a tool for blaming based on tokens
> instead of lines. A "string blame" or a "token blame" could be
> a nice GSoC project (but maybe for future editions).

I think it's too much work and too risky at this point for a SGoC. It could require a lot of discussions on the mailing list before there is some consensus on the command and the way it should be implemented.

If there was already some kind of consensus about a new command and how it should work my opinion could be different, but for this year, yeah, let's just pass on this one.

Thanks.
Christian Couder· Feb 3, 2026, 10:08 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 10:37 AM Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:

> Otherwise everyone who said they were interested in (co-)mentoring
> should be listed as a potential mentor of each of these projects.
Lucas, Justin, Siddharth, Ayush and Chandra,

I have also invited you as "Mentor" into the Git org on the GSoC website. Let me know if you haven't received the invite or if you have issues with it.

Kaartic, and Karthik,

You should still be Org Admin and Mentor respectively for the Git org on the GSoC website.

I have removed everyone else, but please let me know if you still want to participate.

Christian Couder· Feb 3, 2026, 10:22 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 11:08 AM Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines
>
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 10:37 AM Christian Couder
> <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Otherwise everyone who said they were interested in (co-)mentoring
> > should be listed as a potential mentor of each of these projects.
>
> Lucas, Justin, Siddharth, Ayush and Chandra,
>
> I have also invited you as "Mentor" into the Git org on the GSoC
> website. Let me know if you haven't received the invite or if you have
> issues with it.
>
> Kaartic, and Karthik,
>
> You should still be Org Admin and Mentor respectively for the Git org
> on the GSoC website.
>
> I have removed everyone else, but please let me know if you still want
> to participate.

I have also applied for the Git project as a GSoC 2026 Organization as the deadline was today at 18:00 UTC.

Karthik Nayak· Jan 30, 2026, 09:32 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> writes:
Show 12 quoted lines
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 9:28 PM Kaartic Sivaraam
> <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Just a gentle nudge for the project ideas. The deadline to apply for GSoC is Feb 3 18:00 UTC. We need the ideas page ready a couple of days before it at least.
>
> Thanks for the nudge!
>
>> Feel free to chime in to suggest ideas that would be achievable by someone new-ish to the community. If you're doubtful whether an idea would be relevant for GSoC, feel free to share the same and we can discuss it.
>
> Here are ideas I came up with:
Thanks Chris for leading this effort!
Show 31 quoted lines
>
> 1) Continue the current work on removing global variables.
>
> 2) Finish, and then maybe improve, some work Eric Ju started a long
> time ago on `git cat-file`.
>
> 3) Improve git-backfill, or maybe a different command, so it can
> remove large local blobs when they are available on a promisor remote
> (for clients who want to get back disk space).
>
> 4) Implement some kind of fetch order when more than 1 promisor remote
> is configured (this order could be passed from servers to clients
> through the promisor-remote protocol to make sure the fetches happen
> in the optimal order).
>
> 5) Make the promisor-remote protocol useful when the server wants to
> advertise "better-connected" remotes (not just remotes the server
> uses) as Junio suggested some time ago (see
> Documentation/gitprotocol-v2.adoc).
>
> 6) Improve `git repo info` so it can show more information than now.
>
> 7) Improve `git repo structure` so it can show more stats than now.
>
> 8) Improve fast-export/fast-import and maybe git-repo-filter regarding
> commit and/or tag signatures. This might conflict with GitLab people
> (including me) possibly working on that soon though.
>
> I would be willing to mentor any of them, but I don't have much
> knowledge on `git repo`, so I think it makes more sense for me to
> avoid 6) and 7).

I'd be willing to mentor any of the projects listed. I have a little context in all of these, but that's a good reason to understand more :)

Maybe we can also decide how many projects we are willing to mentor this year?

Karthik
Christian Couder· Feb 3, 2026, 09:46 UTC · re: Karthik Nayak · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi Karthik,
On Fri, Jan 30, 2026 at 10:32 AM Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd be willing to mentor any of the projects listed. I have a little
> context in all of these, but that's a good reason to understand more :)

Thanks for being willing to mentor any of the projects. It will likely help us better manage the different possibilities.

> Maybe we can also decide how many projects we are willing to mentor this
> year?

I don't think we need to decide right now. Let's wait until everyone has stated their preferences. It might happen that other projects get proposed or that some mentors agree on (co-)mentoring more than one project.

Chandra Pratap· Jan 22, 2026, 14:43 UTC · re: Kaartic Sivaraam · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hey all!
On Thu, 22 Jan 2026, 10:38 Kaartic Sivaraam, <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 24 quoted lines
>
> Hi Christian,
>
> Thank you for initiating the discussion.
>
> On 16/01/26 16:36, Christian Couder wrote:
> >
> > The application period for mentoring organizations to participate in
> > GSoC 2026 is from January 19 to February 3. Let's try to anticipate a
> > bit and decide soon if the Git project wants to participate.
> >
>
> Indeed.
>
> > If we want to participate, we need (co-)mentors, org-admins, projects
> > and micro-projects ideas, and we need to update existing pages or
> > create new ones on the Git Developer Pages (git.github.io) website (or
> > on git-scm.org if we want to switch this to it now). Please chime in
> > if you are interested.
> >
>
> I would be glad to help as an org-Admin this year too. I could act as a fallback mentor in case any mentor / co-mentor becomes unavailable during a particular period of the program.
>
> I also Cc-ed Chandra Pratap as they expressed interest to be a co-mentor before.

I'd be glad to help as a co-mentor. I think I'd be able to best help with project ideas related to reftable or testing, seeing how I worked on reftable tests in my GSoC project, but please let me know if I can help with anything else as well!

Christian Couder· Feb 3, 2026, 10:32 UTC · re: Chandra Pratap · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi Chandra,

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 3:43 PM Chandra Pratap <chandrapratap3519@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Jan 2026, 10:38 Kaartic Sivaraam, <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 8 quoted lines
> > I would be glad to help as an org-Admin this year too. I could act as a fallback mentor in case any mentor / co-mentor becomes unavailable during a particular period of the program.
> >
> > I also Cc-ed Chandra Pratap as they expressed interest to be a co-mentor before.
>
> I'd be glad to help as a co-mentor. I think I'd be able to best help
> with project ideas related to reftable or testing, seeing how I worked
> on reftable tests in my GSoC project, but please let me know if I can
> help with anything else as well!
Thanks for volunteering!

We don't have project ideas related to reftable or testing in our idea list, but we could add some. If you have preferences among the projects listed there, let us know though.

Chandra Pratap· Feb 3, 2026, 14:15 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

On Tue, 3 Feb 2026 at 16:03, Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 21 quoted lines
>
> Hi Chandra,
>
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 3:43 PM Chandra Pratap
> <chandrapratap3519@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 22 Jan 2026, 10:38 Kaartic Sivaraam, <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I would be glad to help as an org-Admin this year too. I could act as a fallback mentor in case any mentor / co-mentor becomes unavailable during a particular period of the program.
> > >
> > > I also Cc-ed Chandra Pratap as they expressed interest to be a co-mentor before.
> >
> > I'd be glad to help as a co-mentor. I think I'd be able to best help
> > with project ideas related to reftable or testing, seeing how I worked
> > on reftable tests in my GSoC project, but please let me know if I can
> > help with anything else as well!
>
> Thanks for volunteering!
>
> We don't have project ideas related to reftable or testing in our idea
> list, but we could add some. If you have preferences among the
> projects listed there, let us know though.

Among the present ideas, I think I will be best able to help with "Complete and extend the remote-object-info command for git cat-file". I could help with the other projects as well but I think my co-mentor(s) would have to pick up too much slack in that case.

P.S: I did not receive the "mentorship invite" that you talked of earlier.

Thanks, Chandra.

Christian Couder· Feb 3, 2026, 19:30 UTC · re: Chandra Pratap · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 3:15 PM Chandra Pratap <chandrapratap3519@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Tue, 3 Feb 2026 at 16:03, Christian Couder
> <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 8 quoted lines
> > We don't have project ideas related to reftable or testing in our idea
> > list, but we could add some. If you have preferences among the
> > projects listed there, let us know though.
>
> Among the present ideas, I think I will be best able to help with "Complete
> and extend the remote-object-info command for git cat-file". I could help
> with the other projects as well but I think my co-mentor(s) would have to
> pick up too much slack in that case.
Fine, I have removed you as a possible mentor for the two other projects then.
Kaartic Sivaraam· Feb 22, 2026, 18:40 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi everyone,
On 16 January 2026 4:36:13 pm IST, Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 5 quoted lines
>
>The application period for mentoring organizations to participate in
>GSoC 2026 is from January 19 to February 3. Let's try to anticipate a
>bit and decide soon if the Git project wants to participate.
>
Just to keep this thread updated. Git has been successfuly accepted as a mentoring organization for 2026. Thank you to Christian for organizing. Also, thank you to our community members who've volunteered to mentor students this year: Karthik Nayak, Justin Tobler, Siddharth Asthana, Chandra Pratap and Ayush Chandekar
Let us look forward towards a good summer of code experience for the new contributors who could potentially become long-term members of the community.
  <https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2026/organizations/git>
It's good to see GSoC related contributions in the list already. Similarly, we'll be seeing more candidates participating by sending out their micro-projects. Let's give them a good guidance :-)
That said, we have the ideas listed in our ideas page. Feel free to suggest more ideas if you have any.
  <https://git.github.io/SoC-2026-Ideas>
Volunteer mentors willing to mentor students are always welcome. Let us know if you're interested.
-- 
Sivaraam

Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
Christian Couder· Jan 21, 2026, 14:41 UTC · lore

Re: Git project and GSoC 2026

Hi Ayush,

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 11:39 AM Ayush Chandekar <ayu.chandekar@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 16, 2026 at 4:36 PM Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 7 quoted lines
> > If we want to participate, we need (co-)mentors, org-admins, projects
> > and micro-projects ideas, and we need to update existing pages or
> > create new ones on the Git Developer Pages (git.github.io) website (or
> > on git-scm.org if we want to switch this to it now). Please chime in
> > if you are interested.
>
> Yes, I am interested in co-mentoring for the GSoC 2026. I will also help in updating the Developer Pages.
Thanks, I will add you to the Slack channel.

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