Google Summer of Code applications open on January 19 for organizations. NixOS had previously applied to be an organization in 2014 and 2015 but neither time was accepted. I think it would be great if we could get an application in for this year. It's not clear what criteria the GSoC use for accepting orgs but I'm thinking that the growth the Nix* projects have experienced over the last 2 years gives us a pretty good shot.
The most important thing right now is getting a list of mentors. Lots of the mentors from 2015 are still active so I'm hoping to get input from them. New mentors would also be welcome! I think @iElectric organized the efforts previously, so I'm hoping to see if he is available.
I am currently eligible to work as a student over this summer if NixOS gets accepted. I'd really enjoy working on NixOS-stuff and I think it would be really helpful to the Nix* project.
These are some various ideas. Some are new and some are based on the wiki page.
- NixOS graphical installer: Use something like Calamares, make it generate a NixOS config, then run some basic installation commands.
- Nix graphical package manager: Extending on my original efforts in getting PackageKit working with Nix, this would be a GUI application that makes managing Nix/NixOS easier.
- Improve Nix build output: This would either be reporting progress NixOS/nix#896 or "Improve nix-build output for post-processing" or both.
- In-memory representation of derivations: get rid of the .drv files in Nix
Obviously there are lots of other ideas that are worthwhile, hopefully potential mentors can contribute more.