SoC-2020-Microprojects.md

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default	SoC 2020 Applicant Microprojects	false

Introduction

First make sure you read and understand our general guidelines and suggestions for microprojects.

There are some suggestions on how you can find some microprojects on your own in the document.

Ideas for microprojects

Add more builtin patterns for userdiff

"git diff" shows the function name corresponding to each hunk after the @@ ... @@ line. For common languages (C, HTML, Ada, Matlab, ...), the way to find the function name is built-in Git's source code as regular expressions (see userdiff.c). A few languages are common enough to deserve a built-in driver, but are not yet recognized. For example, shell.

This project requires a very good knowledge of regular expressions.

It is easy though to find examples of how this can be done by searching the code base and the mailing list archive, as this has already been done for a number of languages.

Use test_path_is_* functions in test scripts

Find one test script that verifies the presence/absence of files/directories with 'test -(e|f|d|...)' and replace them with the appropriate test_path_is_file, test_path_is_dir, etc. helper functions.

If you can't find one please tell us, along with the command you used to search, so that we can remove this microproject idea.

Avoid pipes in git related commands in test scripts

See the commit c6f44e1da5 for example, and then do the same thing in one other test script.

The git command should be on the left side of the pipe.

If you can't find one please tell us, along with the command you used to search, so that we can remove this microproject idea.

Use unsigned integral type for collection of bits.

Pick one field of a structure that (1) is of signed integral type and (2) is used as a collection of multiple bits. Discuss if there is a good reason why it has to be a signed integral field and change it to an unsigned type otherwise. [thread]

Even though the amount of code to write is small, these projects involve a lot of prior work to understand the specification and deal with all potential corner-cases.

Add configuration options for some commonly used command-line options

Many have already been added (e.g. "git am -3" in e97a5e7).

Some people always run the command with these options, and would prefer to be able to activate them by default in ~/.gitconfig.

For some options though, we have made a deliberate choice to not provide a configuration option. So ask on the mailing list if it's ok before working on this.