contributing to gcc

[Joe Buck]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2012 at 04:33:54PM -0800, Aayush Upadhyay wrote:

> I'm a sophomore in college, and I'm a solid C programmer. I'd like to
  work on an open source project, and the gcc compiler seems like a great
  one. However, I'm not sure if work is still done on the compiler itself,
  or just porting it to other systems? I'm interested in the former, but I
  don't know much about compilers. Would it be possible for me to make
  meaningful contributions, and if so, how should I start?

Quite a bit of work is being done on the compiler itself, with lots of
brainpower devoted to making it better and to implement the latest
language standards.

There is a great deal of information on gcc development on http://gcc.gnu.org/ .
As this is a core piece of infrastructure for GNU/Linux and lots of other
folks, standards are extremely high.  However, you could start out by
reading

http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html

and

http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/beginner.html

The latter lists some projects that non-experts could contribute to,
though it is wise to check for duplication and relevance before starting
any major efforts.