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

[Laura Ekstrand]

That was basically my background (mechanical engineering + lots of OpenGL)
when I started six months ago, but I have found the lack of mentoring to be
a large roadblock.  At that time, I wrote tests, but there were few people
willing to review them and give timely feedback.  I was advised to go ahead
and push the tests after a month, but then others came back weeks later
with lots of late reviews after the fact.  They were highly critical and
made me feel unwelcome in the community.  I've had more success working
directly on the Mesa driver.

So I'm not sure we can attract and retain these types of students.

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 6:23 AM, Marek Olšák <maraeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Laura Ekstrand <laura at jlekstrand.net>
> 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.
> >
> > 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.
>
> We should also take into account that there are people having a degree
> in or studying computer science with specialization in computer
> graphics or having strong knowledge of OpenGL already. Such people are
> difficult to find, but they would be very effective with very little
> (if any) mentoring. Gamedev-related forums (gamedev.net, opengl.org,
> etc.) should have a lot of talented people suited for this job, but
> none of them are probably aware of the Mesa/Piglit GSoC.
>
> Marek
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/attachments/20150316/fddf5b8f/attachment.html>