[Mesa-dev] Summer of Code ideas (maybe just an idea wishlist?)

[Martin Peres]

On 13/03/15 19:24, Laura Ekstrand wrote:
> We should try to steer people away from just writing Piglit tests for 
> GSoC, unless they have a specific mentor in mind and have already 
> talked to him or her.  In my experience, Piglit tests are difficult to 
> do well because each one is drastically different from the others and 
> involves cultivating a fairly deep understanding of the the OpenGL 
> function in question.
>
> A project pairing a specific extension with relevant tests (like 
> Martin and I have done with ARB_dsa) would be better as long as it's a 
> fairly specific domain of the OpenGL spec. That way, the student can 
> study the spec for one specific set of objects or entry points and 
> cultivate the necessary understanding they need to write the related 
> tests.

That is indeed something ideal, but 3 months is likely too short for 
this unless it is done on some trivial extensions.

>
> A lot of the emails we've gotten from students saying "I want to write 
> 4.x Piglit tests" have been too broad/generic and would be difficult 
> for a student to master in a summer without lots of 
> mentoring/direction from the community.

I was the one who moved this task from last year's ideas list. The way I 
see it is that many are more familiar with writing opengl code than 
writing drivers. For those students, this project could make sense. The 
questions we got so far did not answer the list of requirements so I 
would say that the students have not been reading this properly.