Re: [9fans] GSoC 2021 project ideas (WAS: Re: Plan 9 Applying to GSoC 2021)

[ori@eigenstate.org]

> > 1. Project ideas. One of the key parts of the application is the
> > project ideas page. If you’ve got ideas that seem like they’d be a
> 
> Plan 9-related:
> 
> (1) Porting the Plan 9 kernel to a microkernel architecture, such as
>     Mach.  This would give Plan 9 instant access to the whole range of
>     hardware supported by the underlying microkernel.

I'm not aware of any freely available
microkernels that support a whole range
of hardware.

Gnu Mach doesn't appear to support XHCI,
which would leave my cpu server and one
of my laptops with no plugs for my keyboard.

seL4 seems to have a similar level of support.

Which did you have in mind, and what unsupported
hardware would they have?

> (2) A Zoom/video conferencing application for Plan 9.  Enough said.  :)

I'm not sure enough was said.

Can you talk a little bit about the moving
parts for this proposal? Two main things I'm
wondering:

- how stable and well documented the proposed
  protocols are; can you link to the relevant
  documentation? will the work done still be
  useful 6 months after it's written, or will
  it be a churn treadmill?

- what video codecs would be needed, and what
  are the steps needed to port them?

> (3) Happauge/Brooktree BTTV/video capture drivers.  AFAIK, Plan 9 can
>     only use USB Web cams.

Driver support should definitely be on the
list, though this is somewhat niche hardware,
especially in the days of video streaming.

> (4) Port SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) tools as a Plan 9 file system.
>     That would give Plan 9 instant access to a huge range of flatbed &
>     sheet-fed document scanners.

I took a peek at the code -- there's a lot
of direct calls to opening the devices; it
may be more expedient to implement TWAIN
natively, rather than porting.

> (5) An NFS sever for Plan 9.  Unix machines have a lot of trouble
>     handling edge cases encountered on 9P filesystems (such as the
>     number of hard links to directories).  An NFS server would make it
>     much easier for Unix/Linux and Plan 9 to get along happily.

Can you describe the problems you ran into
when you tried nfsserver(8), and what changes
you'd expect a student to make to fix them?


------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T1c300cdbd9941edb-M216325788941f5dd4704684a
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription