GCC GSoC 2026: Call for project ideas and mentors

[David Malcolm]

On Mon, 2026-01-19 at 16:08 +0100, Martin Jambor wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> another year has passed, Google has announced there will be again
> Google
> Summer of Code (GsoC) in 2026 and the deadline for organizations to
> apply
> is already approaching (February 3rd).  I'd like to volunteer to be
> the
> main org-admin for GCC again but let me know if you think I shouldn't
> or
> that someone else should or if you want to do it instead.  Otherwise
> I'll
> assume that I will and I hope that I can continue to rely on Thomas
> Schwinge and David Edelsohn to back me up and help me with some
> decision
> making along the way as my co-org-admins.
> 
> ======================== The most important bit:
> ========================
> 
> I would like to ask all (moderately) seasoned GCC contributors to
> consider
> mentoring a contributor this year and ideally also come up with a
> project
> that they would like to lead.  We are collecting proposal on our wiki
> page
> https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode - feel free to add yours to the
> top
> list there.  Or, if you are unsure, post your offer and project idea
> as a
> reply here to the mailing list.
> 
> Additionally, if you have added an idea to the list in recent years,
> please review it whether it is still up-to-date or needs adjusting or
> should be removed altogether.
> 
> =====================================================================
> ====
> 
> At this point, we need to collect list of project ideas.  Eventually,
> each listed project idea should have:
> 
>   a) a project title,
>   b) more detailed description of the project (2-5 sentences),
>   c) expected outcomes (we do have a catch-almost-all formulation
> that
>      outcome is generally patches at the bottom of the list on the
>      wiki),
>   d) project size - whether it is expected to take approximately 350,
>      175 or just 90 hours (see below about the last option),
>   e) difficulty (easy, hard or medium, but we don't really have easy
>      projects),
>   f) expected mentors,
>   g) skills required/preferred, and...
> 
>   h) [this is new] ...pointers to things applicant should study in
> order
>      to learn about the topic.  Please think also about a way to
> verify
>      they can get basic stiff done (post test results, look up basic
> stuff
>      in a gdb session... etc) though these do not need to be listed,
> these
>      can be requested when they approach us. (See notes from Cauldron
> 2025
>      GSoC BoF:
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2025-October/246780.html).

Thanks for volunteering to organize.

I can mentor a -fanalyzer GCC GSoC project this year.  I've gone
through the list of -fanalyzer ideas in:
  https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode#Selected_Project_Ideas
and the four of them still look good.  For (h) above, I've added this
note: "Applicants should familiarize themselves with GCC's GIMPLE
representation, and the internals of the static analyzer" (with a link
to the pertinent part of the gcc internals html).


[...]

Dave