Lazarus Season of Code

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The Lazarus Season of Code (LSoC) is a project designed to attract students and developers to help developing FPC/Lazarus as well as to implement some tasks which are strategically important, but which would remain unimplemented due to lack of developers. Some tasks will be available only for students, while other tasks may be open as bounties, for anyone to participate. We lack enough money to pay for the full value of the development, so the payment should be considered more like a schoolarship, or a costs help.

All information in this page is pre-eliminary and subject to change or cancelation at any moment.

Basic concepts

  • Task - Each task should be rather large, but also not too large, and preferably something which is stuck for some time, without anyone fixing that and which is of strategical importance for Lazarus/FPC to develop as a viable software development solution for most Desktop platforms, most PDA platforms, as well as the Web.
  • Mentor - someone who would guide the implementor(s) and verify that the solution is of good quality and fixes the problem. There is no budget to pay mentors.
  • Student - A student which would finish the required task in a given amount of time (let's say 3 months). He will be awarded the value of the task if the task is finished successfully.
  • Coder - Another idea would be giving a task to not only students, this is under consideration.

Rules:

  • All developed parts need to be very well documented
  • The typical maximum time for completion of a task will be 3 months, but try to measure for less. Tasks not completed in time will most probably not be payed
  • Write the code with good identation, preferably Borland Style or the style of the surrounding code.
  • All code needs to be well commented

Timeline and Rules

Initial timeline for 2010 - Winter / Summer (Northern / Southern Hemisphery):

  • November: 1st until 15th - Subscriptions
  • November: 3rd week - Subscription Review
  • December, January, February - Implementation, Documentation, Validation and Payment

Initial timeline for 2011 - Summer / Winter (Northern / Southern Hemisphery):

  • Juny: 1st until 15th - Subscriptions
  • Juny: 3rd week - Subscription Review
  • July, August, September - Implementation, Documentation, Validation and Payment

List of ideas for Tasks

This list is a collection of tasks which may be added to a particular LSoC depending on the priority of the task, available money, available mentors, available students, etc.

# Task Platforms Skills Mentor Value Comments
1 Implement a cross-platform API to support complex input methods (japanese, chinese) in the LCL Win32/64, Gtk2, Qt4, Carbon ? Dmitry EUR100 -
2 Start a Java port of Free Pascal, generating assembler for Jasmin. The compiler should support units, procedures, records, arrays and all numeric data types. The RTL should support WriteLn and ReadLn. Win32 ? Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho EUR200 Strategic importance in the long run and testing the viability of such a port
3 Finish the MIPS 32-bits Little Endian port of Free Pascal. The target operating system is Debian Linux. MIPS/Linux ? ? EUR200 -
4 Write a Pascal tutorial focused on Lazarus/FPC covering the most important topics: streams, file handling, cross-platform tips, data types, records, arrays, links to the most important rtl/fcl functions, sysutils, etc... N/A ? Mattias EUR100 -
5 XML Syntax Checker and fix most XML bugs. See: [1] [2] N/A ? Mattias? EUR100 -
6 Create a table in the wiki mapping all JIL cross-platform PDA APIs to the appropriate API in various PDA operating systems. Also implement about 10% of JIL in the PDA platforms supported by Lazarus/FPC Windows CE, Android, MaeMo, iPhone ? Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho EUR100 -
7 Fix database bugs. N/A ? ? EUR150 for run 1 -
8 Fix most bugs regarding documentation display and lhelp. N/A ? ? EUR100 -
9 Create a tool attached to the Lazarus IDE to generate UML class diagrams from the source code. N/A ? Mattias EUR100 -
10 Implement the new Unicode String Type and the RTL Unicode Support. N/A ? ? EUR100 for part 1 -
11 Create proper Lazarus installers for different platforms. N/A ? ? Currently the installation is harder than it should be. See InstallationProblems|-

List of Open Tasks

None at the moment

Subscription for Students

Not open at the moment

Project Manager

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho