I'm officially soliciting ideas for student projects for this year's 2010 Summer of Code. If you're maintaining or contributing to a library and have some non-trivial items on a TODO list, then suggesting that as a possible student project may be a viable idea. Unlike the previous years, I think that proposing work on sandbox libraries would also be a good idea. There is a substantial amount of work in the sandbox that might be well-suited for student projects and eventual (I hope) acceptance to Boost. In general student projects should be tightly focused with a clear set of goals to getting their work integrated into a mainline development branch (be that trunk or sandbox). In general, we've noticed that ground-up libraries almost always fail to be integrated or released independently since they require a commitment longer than the summer. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this rule. If you are going to propose a student project, please keep in mind the following things: 1. Students tend to go away in the fall. 2. If their work isn't tended after August, then it's largely forgotten 3. If the student is gone and their work is forgotten, then the project didn't really succeed. If you write down or submit a project, please include your expectations for that work. And try to keep it small. That said, if you're too precise in the specifications, we'll going to get a couple dozen proposals that simply reiterate your expectations. But that's the nature of the beast. Good ideas for projects might be: == Data Structures and Algorithms== Admittedly these have little impact on overall quality of Boost, but make a nice sandbox for students to work in and can result in surprisingly good code. Over the course of the summer 1 or 2 related data structures or a family of related generic algorithms seems to make a nicely packaged project. ==Extensions for Existing Libraries== There are a number of Boost libraries that are very amenable to extension (e.g., BGL, GIL, Math, etc.). Basically any library that doesn't have a finite feature space. Non-intrusive changes (i.e., those that don't require hacking on the existing bits) typically make good summer of code projects. == Infrastructure Projects== Projects that aren't part of Boost, but help us improve the quality of Boost might make decent projects, but we've never had one proposed or accepted that I'm aware of. Remember, we can't accept documentation projects so "Write my documents" will not be a good student project (unfortunately ;) ==Applications of Boost== This is a little different... It might be a good idea to have students build real (example?) applications that use the Boost C++ Libraries. There are a number of real benefits to having students work in this space. First, these applications are very obvious clients of Boost. They can provide immediate feedback on issues with the interface, usability, correctness, performance, documentation, etc. Second, they might make really good examples of best practice for using Boost. Third, they probably make nice student projects. If you have any ideas, let's hear them. And remember, funded projects need mentors. Andrew Sutton andrew.n.sutton@gmail.com