Good Day Flashrom People! As you might know already, we are currently preparing an application for GSoC 2022 (also known as Google Summer of Code, FAQ <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/faq>). We have gathered a list of Project Ideas, and it's time to call for Mentors! If you are interested in being a Mentor, please let us know. If you want to help, but not sure you can be a Mentor yourself, you can be a secondary Mentor. Or you can help by doing code reviews. Have a look into our Projects ideas, are you interested to Mentor one of these projects? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AxMobB2v8Dv2uUwZPZ_vCmmONYDJuliHcnjfWOs4... Or maybe you have another project idea that you want to mentor? Great! GSoC runs by a timeline https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline, check that dates are OK for you. How to let us know if you are interested: Reply All to this email. If you are in doubt, you can contact me (Anastasia/aklm) directly. Some more useful information: Mentor responsibilities (short) https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/responsibilities#mentor_... Mentor guides (long, lots of details) https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/ If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask! ;) Your GSoC Org Admin, Anastasia.
Hi Anastasia, thanks to you and all the brainstormers. Sounds good so far. Overall I liked to read the topic “Optimize Erase-Function Selection”. I´d like to support this enhancement. I.e. I can´t do the “mentor” job, however I can do code review, real HW-testing and similar actions supporting the mentor and/or contributor. So when there will be a mentor for this topic, he/she is welcome to get in touch with me to see if/how I can help. Regards, Simon Von: Anastasia Klimchuk <aklm@chromium.org> Gesendet: Dienstag, 25. Januar 2022 12:31 An: flashrom <flashrom@flashrom.org> Cc: Felix Singer <felixsinger@posteo.net> Betreff: [flashrom] Call for Mentors for GSoC 2022 Good Day Flashrom People! As you might know already, we are currently preparing an application for GSoC 2022 (also known as Google Summer of Code, FAQ<https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/faq>). We have gathered a list of Project Ideas, and it's time to call for Mentors! If you are interested in being a Mentor, please let us know. If you want to help, but not sure you can be a Mentor yourself, you can be a secondary Mentor. Or you can help by doing code reviews. Have a look into our Projects ideas, are you interested to Mentor one of these projects? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AxMobB2v8Dv2uUwZPZ_vCmmONYDJuliHcnjfWOs4... Or maybe you have another project idea that you want to mentor? Great! GSoC runs by a timeline https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline, check that dates are OK for you. How to let us know if you are interested: Reply All to this email. If you are in doubt, you can contact me (Anastasia/aklm) directly. Some more useful information: Mentor responsibilities (short) https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/responsibilities#mentor_... Mentor guides (long, lots of details) https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/ If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask! ;) Your GSoC Org Admin, Anastasia.
Hi Simon, Thank you very much for your support, and nice to meet you! I truly believe we can achieve great things together as a community! Any news about mentors will be posted to this thread, so everyone knows what’s going on. Also to Everyone, I forgot to clarify in my first email that a Mentor will be running only one project during GSoC. However you can say “I am happy to be a Mentor for 1-2-3, even for all 12 projects”, which just means you can do any of them. Not all of them :) Realistically, we will probably get 1-2 projects running. On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 7:29 PM Buhrow, Simon <simon.buhrow@sieb-meyer.de> wrote:
Hi Anastasia,
thanks to you and all the brainstormers. Sounds good so far.
Overall I liked to read the topic “Optimize Erase-Function Selection”. I´d like to support this enhancement. I.e. I can´t do the “mentor” job, however I can do code review, real HW-testing and similar actions supporting the mentor and/or contributor.
So when there will be a mentor for this topic, he/she is welcome to get in touch with me to see if/how I can help.
Regards,
Simon
*Von:* Anastasia Klimchuk <aklm@chromium.org> *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 25. Januar 2022 12:31 *An:* flashrom <flashrom@flashrom.org> *Cc:* Felix Singer <felixsinger@posteo.net> *Betreff:* [flashrom] Call for Mentors for GSoC 2022
Good Day Flashrom People!
As you might know already, we are currently preparing an application for GSoC 2022 (also known as Google Summer of Code, FAQ <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/faq>). We have gathered a list of Project Ideas, and it's time to call for Mentors! If you are interested in being a Mentor, please let us know. If you want to help, but not sure you can be a Mentor yourself, you can be a secondary Mentor. Or you can help by doing code reviews.
Have a look into our Projects ideas, are you interested to Mentor one of these projects?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AxMobB2v8Dv2uUwZPZ_vCmmONYDJuliHcnjfWOs4...
Or maybe you have another project idea that you want to mentor? Great!
GSoC runs by a timeline https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline, check that dates are OK for you.
How to let us know if you are interested: Reply All to this email. If you are in doubt, you can contact me (Anastasia/aklm) directly.
Some more useful information:
Mentor responsibilities (short) https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/responsibilities#mentor_...
Mentor guides (long, lots of details) https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/
If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask! ;)
Your GSoC Org Admin, Anastasia.
-- Anastasia.
On Fri, 2022-01-28 at 08:29 +0000, Buhrow, Simon wrote:
Overall I liked to read the topic “Optimize Erase-Function Selection”. I´d like to support this enhancement. I.e. I can´t do the “mentor” job, however I can do code review, real HW-testing and similar actions supporting the mentor and/or contributor. So when there will be a mentor for this topic, he/she is welcome to get in touch with me to see if/how I can help.
Hi Simon, thank you for reaching out and for offering your help! Would you mind if we add a note to the document that you can help out with code reviews and things? // Felix
Hi Felix, feel free to do so. It´s a good idea to collect this type of information in the document. Regards, Simon -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Felix Singer <felixsinger@posteo.net> Gesendet: Samstag, 29. Januar 2022 08:10 An: Buhrow, Simon <simon.buhrow@sieb-meyer.de>; Anastasia Klimchuk <aklm@chromium.org>; flashrom <flashrom@flashrom.org> Betreff: Re: [flashrom] Re: Call for Mentors for GSoC 2022 On Fri, 2022-01-28 at 08:29 +0000, Buhrow, Simon wrote:
Overall I liked to read the topic “Optimize Erase-Function Selection”. I´d like to support this enhancement. I.e. I can´t do the “mentor” job, however I can do code review, real HW-testing and similar actions supporting the mentor and/or contributor. So when there will be a mentor for this topic, he/she is welcome to get in touch with me to see if/how I can help.
Hi Simon, thank you for reaching out and for offering your help! Would you mind if we add a note to the document that you can help out with code reviews and things? // Felix
Hej Anastasia, since some of the ideas from the brainstorming are mine, I would also offer to help as (co)mentor for GSoC on those projects. -- Thomas On Tue, 2022-01-25 at 22:31 +1100, Anastasia Klimchuk wrote:
Good Day Flashrom People!
As you might know already, we are currently preparing an application for GSoC 2022 (also known as Google Summer of Code, FAQ). We have gathered a list of Project Ideas, and it's time to call for Mentors! If you are interested in being a Mentor, please let us know. If you want to help, but not sure you can be a Mentor yourself, you can be a secondary Mentor. Or you can help by doing code reviews.
Have a look into our Projects ideas, are you interested to Mentor one of these projects? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AxMobB2v8Dv2uUwZPZ_vCmmONYDJuliHcnjfWOs4... Or maybe you have another project idea that you want to mentor? Great!
GSoC runs by a timeline https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline, check that dates are OK for you.
How to let us know if you are interested: Reply All to this email. If you are in doubt, you can contact me (Anastasia/aklm) directly.
Some more useful information:
Mentor responsibilities (short) https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/responsibilities#mentor_...
Mentor guides (long, lots of details) https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/
If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask! ;)
Your GSoC Org Admin, Anastasia. _______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list -- flashrom@flashrom.org To unsubscribe send an email to flashrom-leave@flashrom.org
Thomas, Simon, Thank you so much!! We will be updating project ideas document at the end of this week (or maybe beginning next week), so I will add names there. And I want to confirm on this thread that I also will be a Mentor myself. My preference is the effort that I started "Emulate hardware and filesystem in platform-independent way for unit tests", however I think I can do some other projects as well, especially with co-mentor and other people helping. On Thu, Feb 3, 2022 at 10:45 AM Thomas Heijligen <src@posteo.de> wrote:
Hej Anastasia,
since some of the ideas from the brainstorming are mine, I would also offer to help as (co)mentor for GSoC on those projects.
-- Thomas
On Tue, 2022-01-25 at 22:31 +1100, Anastasia Klimchuk wrote:
Good Day Flashrom People!
As you might know already, we are currently preparing an application for GSoC 2022 (also known as Google Summer of Code, FAQ). We have gathered a list of Project Ideas, and it's time to call for Mentors! If you are interested in being a Mentor, please let us know. If you want to help, but not sure you can be a Mentor yourself, you can be a secondary Mentor. Or you can help by doing code reviews.
Have a look into our Projects ideas, are you interested to Mentor one of these projects?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AxMobB2v8Dv2uUwZPZ_vCmmONYDJuliHcnjfWOs4...
Or maybe you have another project idea that you want to mentor? Great!
GSoC runs by a timeline https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline, check that dates are OK for you.
How to let us know if you are interested: Reply All to this email. If you are in doubt, you can contact me (Anastasia/aklm) directly.
Some more useful information:
Mentor responsibilities (short)
https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/responsibilities#mentor_...
Mentor guides (long, lots of details) https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/
If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask! ;)
Your GSoC Org Admin, Anastasia. _______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list -- flashrom@flashrom.org To unsubscribe send an email to flashrom-leave@flashrom.org
_______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list -- flashrom@flashrom.org To unsubscribe send an email to flashrom-leave@flashrom.org
-- Anastasia.
Hi Anastasia, Am 03.02.22 um 04:55 schrieb Anastasia Klimchuk:
Thomas, Simon,
Thank you so much!! We will be updating project ideas document at the end of this week (or maybe beginning next week), so I will add names there.
And I want to confirm on this thread that I also will be a Mentor myself. My preference is the effort that I started "Emulate hardware and filesystem in platform-independent way for unit tests", however I think I can do some other projects as well, especially with co-mentor and other people helping.
I'm glad that there is an effort to participate in GSoC again and I hope it will be successful. Reading through the current GSoC ideas list, I would like to share a few thoughts. Unfortunately, some of these ideas are missing a bit of context or may cause needless code churn. Missing context: - Design and implement new CLI based on libflashrom and extend the API as necessary. That would be the fourth or fifth user interface for flashrom. Now if you mean cli_classic.c should be rewritten to use libflashrom, that's something different. The idea doesn't specify more details, but please note that any CLI will have to be supported for the next 20 years and subsequent generations of developers may not be willing to do that. - Emulate hardware and filesystem in platform-independent way for unit tests. flashrom has builtin code for hardware emulation. Some more hardware is emulated quite well by qemu. There were various patches for qemu floating around to help testing flashrom hardware drivers, but someone (TM) would have to dig through our mailing list as well as others. Some more guidance for students is definitely necessary. Code churn: - Refactor arguments parser. The rationale given is "Strings are complicated in C to work with. However, the idea of this is to deduplicate a lot of code.". I agree that strings in C need careful programming. That's also a reason why I doubt rewriting the code would be a good idea. This idea in particular seems to suggest that reinventing a full-blown argument parser building bespoke structures is a way to reduce complexity. In the past, we had proposals to store configuration data and even command line arguments in JSON or XML, then use a system library to parse it. The reasoning for the XML/JSON was that building your own parser was a bad idea. Someone else will come along and refactor things again if we merge a bespoke parser now. "Hey, thanks for your contribution, it will be replaced in the next GSoC" is not something we would want to advertise. I do acknowledge that flashrom has gotten lots of refactoring, but I'm a bit afraid the changelogs suggest that in many cases "TEST=builds" seems to have been the only test that was performed. It's a good thing to have unit tests, but tests on real hardware should be performed if a driver has been refactored. After all, people rely on flashrom to not break their hardware. Regards, Carl-Daniel
Hi Carl-Daniel, On 04.02.22 21:59, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
I'm glad that there is an effort to participate in GSoC again and I hope it will be successful.
Reading through the current GSoC ideas list, I would like to share a few thoughts.
Unfortunately, some of these ideas are missing a bit of context or may cause needless code churn.
please don't see the project ideas as a detailed manual what a student should do. Sure, we could provide more details, but I guess there should be a balance. IMO, there should be enough room for a student to bring forward their own ideas. Eventually, all details need to be discussed before the implementation is started, of course.
Missing context: - Design and implement new CLI based on libflashrom and extend the API as necessary. That would be the fourth or fifth user interface for flashrom. Now if you mean cli_classic.c should be rewritten to use libflashrom, that's something different. The idea doesn't specify more details, but please note that any CLI will have to be supported for the next 20 years and subsequent generations of developers may not be willing to do that.
I don't see a problem with additional CLIs. It depends on their purpose. The idea is not to implement another flashrom frontend that supports all features of cli_classic, but rather to allow simpler implementations that are dedicated to specific use cases. For instance, a CLI that copies data from / to a single flash region. With a stable API and command-line syntax that would need close to 0 maintenance compared to an all-in-one CLI.
- Emulate hardware and filesystem in platform-independent way for unit tests. flashrom has builtin code for hardware emulation. Some more hardware is emulated quite well by qemu. There were various patches for qemu floating around to help testing flashrom hardware drivers, but someone (TM) would have to dig through our mailing list as well as others.
Well, you generally don't want to start an emulator within a unit test, do you? :) IIRC, the idea is simply to implement whatever is necessary to test a single function, for instance the `command()` function of a SPI master. I think I once called that emulation if you want to do it without the programmer hardware, but you could as well call it mocking.
Some more guidance for students is definitely necessary.
Yes, of course. IMO, that can happen interactively.
Code churn: - Refactor arguments parser. The rationale given is "Strings are complicated in C to work with. However, the idea of this is to deduplicate a lot of code.". I agree that strings in C need careful programming. That's also a reason why I doubt rewriting the code would be a good idea. This idea in particular seems to suggest that reinventing a full-blown argument parser building bespoke structures is a way to reduce complexity. In the past, we had proposals to store configuration data and even command line arguments in JSON or XML, then use a system library to parse it. The reasoning for the XML/JSON was that building your own parser was a bad idea. Someone else will come along and refactor things again if we merge a bespoke parser now. "Hey, thanks for your contribution, it will be replaced in the next GSoC" is not something we would want to advertise.
I don't think is going to explode. Nobody said something about drawing non-standard dependencies in. We just want to avoid further code duplication. Like most programmer code that takes arguments follows the same pattern to process it, e.g. check if it's an integer, if it's in range etc. One could also call it the natural evolution of extract_programmer_param(). So basically, do what we always did, but with a little more strategy.
I do acknowledge that flashrom has gotten lots of refactoring, but I'm a bit afraid the changelogs suggest that in many cases "TEST=builds" seems to have been the only test that was performed. It's a good thing to have unit tests, but tests on real hardware should be performed if a driver has been refactored. After all, people rely on flashrom to not break their hardware.
I'm also concerned about the current, real-hardware test coverage. However, personally, I draw a line between changes that affect internal "BIOS" programming and those that don't. Internal programming must work flawlessly. OTOH, external programmers are less scary, worst case (e.g. downgrading flashrom is not an option) somebody needs to apply a hot- fix. If there are big concerns about the internal programmers, we can always limit refactoring to external ones. Actually, to avoid future code duplication, we wouldn't have to touch existing drivers at all. But it also has its benefits to have a uniform code base. Nico
Hi Carl-Daniel, Thank you so much for reading the projects list and for sharing your thoughts! It seems you touched two topics in your email: first one is feedback on gsoc projects, and second one is unit tests vs testing on real hardware. In general, the project descriptions at this stage do not need to be fully detailed. We will certainly get there a bit later, when discussing projects with potential contributors. And your feedback is really important. Missing context:
… Emulate hardware and filesystem in platform-independent way for unit tests.
“For unit tests” meant to be the context :) Dummy is used in unit tests wherever it makes sense, however sometimes it is not enough. For example, as you said, it is important to test flashrom hardware drivers, but this can’t be done with dummy. This project specifically, is continuing existing effort, so yes there will be good guidance for students and also examples of what’s already done. I do acknowledge that flashrom
has gotten lots of refactoring, but I'm a bit afraid the changelogs suggest that in many cases "TEST=builds" seems to have been the only test that was performed. It's a good thing to have unit tests, but tests on real hardware should be performed if a driver has been refactored. After all, people rely on flashrom to not break their hardware.
Unit tests are not the replacement of tests on real hardware. However, there is a class of code errors that unit tests can catch (and human eye can miss), and so code is in better shape when it comes to hardware testing. Also, just to be fair, for *some* of the patches unit tests are sufficient. For some, not for all of them, of course. On Sat, Feb 19, 2022 at 1:14 AM Nico Huber <nico.h@gmx.de> wrote:
Hi Carl-Daniel,
On 04.02.22 21:59, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
I'm glad that there is an effort to participate in GSoC again and I hope it will be successful.
Reading through the current GSoC ideas list, I would like to share a few thoughts.
Unfortunately, some of these ideas are missing a bit of context or may cause needless code churn.
please don't see the project ideas as a detailed manual what a student should do. Sure, we could provide more details, but I guess there should be a balance. IMO, there should be enough room for a student to bring forward their own ideas. Eventually, all details need to be discussed before the implementation is started, of course.
Missing context: - Design and implement new CLI based on libflashrom and extend the API as necessary. That would be the fourth or fifth user interface for flashrom. Now if you mean cli_classic.c should be rewritten to use libflashrom, that's something different. The idea doesn't specify more details, but please note that any CLI will have to be supported for the next 20 years and subsequent generations of developers may not be willing to do that.
I don't see a problem with additional CLIs. It depends on their purpose. The idea is not to implement another flashrom frontend that supports all features of cli_classic, but rather to allow simpler implementations that are dedicated to specific use cases. For instance, a CLI that copies data from / to a single flash region. With a stable API and command-line syntax that would need close to 0 maintenance compared to an all-in-one CLI.
- Emulate hardware and filesystem in platform-independent way for unit tests. flashrom has builtin code for hardware emulation. Some more hardware is emulated quite well by qemu. There were various patches for qemu floating around to help testing flashrom hardware drivers, but someone (TM) would have to dig through our mailing list as well as others.
Well, you generally don't want to start an emulator within a unit test, do you? :) IIRC, the idea is simply to implement whatever is necessary to test a single function, for instance the `command()` function of a SPI master. I think I once called that emulation if you want to do it without the programmer hardware, but you could as well call it mocking.
Some more guidance for students is definitely necessary.
Yes, of course. IMO, that can happen interactively.
Code churn: - Refactor arguments parser. The rationale given is "Strings are complicated in C to work with. However, the idea of this is to deduplicate a lot of code.". I agree that strings in C need careful programming. That's also a reason why I doubt rewriting the code would be a good idea. This idea in particular seems to suggest that reinventing a full-blown argument parser building bespoke structures is a way to reduce complexity. In the past, we had proposals to store configuration data and even command line arguments in JSON or XML, then use a system library to parse it. The reasoning for the XML/JSON was that building your own parser was a bad idea. Someone else will come along and refactor things again if we merge a bespoke parser now. "Hey, thanks for your contribution, it will be replaced in the next GSoC" is not something we would want to advertise.
I don't think is going to explode. Nobody said something about drawing non-standard dependencies in. We just want to avoid further code duplication. Like most programmer code that takes arguments follows the same pattern to process it, e.g. check if it's an integer, if it's in range etc. One could also call it the natural evolution of extract_programmer_param(). So basically, do what we always did, but with a little more strategy.
I do acknowledge that flashrom has gotten lots of refactoring, but I'm a bit afraid the changelogs suggest that in many cases "TEST=builds" seems to have been the only test that was performed. It's a good thing to have unit tests, but tests on real hardware should be performed if a driver has been refactored. After all, people rely on flashrom to not break their hardware.
I'm also concerned about the current, real-hardware test coverage. However, personally, I draw a line between changes that affect internal "BIOS" programming and those that don't. Internal programming must work flawlessly. OTOH, external programmers are less scary, worst case (e.g. downgrading flashrom is not an option) somebody needs to apply a hot- fix. If there are big concerns about the internal programmers, we can always limit refactoring to external ones. Actually, to avoid future code duplication, we wouldn't have to touch existing drivers at all. But it also has its benefits to have a uniform code base.
Nico
-- Anastasia.
participants (6)
-
Anastasia Klimchuk -
Buhrow, Simon -
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Felix Singer -
Nico Huber -
Thomas Heijligen