KDE and Google Summer of Code 2018

Fri Jan 19 20:19:23 UTC 2018

Am 2018-01-18 23:05, schrieb Roman Gilg:
> Yea, I thought that we could find maybe some intermediate state/goal
> for the parallel rendering to which we can fallback when the overall
> goal can't be achieved. I would add a line about the difficulty of
> this project to the idea list. What do you think about this plan? But
> if you still think that it's not a good idea, I'll remove it.

The task is huge and that's the main problem.
* Compositor needs to be woken up for each screen
* Which then goes into the scene to setup the information on what to 
repaint
* which then goes into the effects

Now the main difficulty is that when e.g. a window is on both screens 
the damage gets reset when the first screen is repainted. The complete 
architecture is not fit for that. We would have to track the damage in a 
screen aware manner (which is hardly possible with the lousy screen API 
we have in KWin).

I spend lots of thinking about how to get the rendering of the 
Compositor into an own thread - which goes into the same area. Ideally 
each output would have a dedicated rendering thread. I started some work 
on it, but probably completely unusable.

So a reasonable scope could be:
* improved internal screen API which allows a window to know on which 
screens it is and damage per screen
* adjust the Compositor to be on top of that per screen damage
* maybe get the scene to be adjusted to use this information

That could be a neat way as we could introduce step by step without 
removing the old code. So the result could be that KWin core can handle 
it, but it would not be used yet as effects don't support it. Or only if 
no effect is active.

Cheers
Martin

> 
> Your project ideas sound great. I will add these to the ideas list.
> Also maybe David could mentor one of them.
> 
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 7:54 PM, Martin Flöser <mgraesslin at kde.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> Am 2018-01-18 15:23, schrieb Roman Gilg:
>> 
>>> I added two KWin project ideas:
>>> https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas#KWin [1]
>> 
>> The first idea (parallel rendering) is IMHO too difficult for a
>> GSoC. The other idea sounds reasonable from scope.
>> 
>> Cheers
>> Martin
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 6:18 PM, Roman Gilg <subdiff at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Valorie, do we have until 23rd with project ideas? I didn't want to
>> mentor this year because I only was a GSoC student last year, but
>> since there are not yet many ideas from Plasma/KWin I might do it
>> anyway.
>> 
>> Nate, I want to get a rework of the Wayland Mouse KCM already into
>> Plasma 5.13. But the final GSoC submission is way after the release.
>> Libinput configuration on X might be still a valuable addition
>> (although I would like to see these resources better spent on some
>> other part of the Wayland session, in particular when you factor in
>> the late final submission next summer).
>> 
>> Cheers
>> Roman
>> 
>> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 8:15 PM, Nate Graham <pointedstick at zoho.com>
>> wrote:
>> I've submitted an idea for System Settings: Improve handling for
>> touchpads and mice with Libinput
>> 
>> 
> https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas#Improve_handling_for_touchpads_and_mice_with_Libinput
>> [2]
>> [1]
>> 
>> This is pretty important going forward since most distros are
>> shipping with Libinput now, but our users aren't able to configure
>> their devices without resorting to editing xorg config files using a
>> different driver.
>> 
>> Nate
>> 
>> On 01/15/2018 06:13 AM, Dmitry Kazakov wrote:
>> Hi, Valorie!
>> 
>> I have just edited the list of Krita ideas, now we have 8 ideas, 4
>> of which are low-hanging fruits with localized optimizations of the
>> code. I hope that will help people who do not want to learn all
>> half-million lines of Krita code.
>> 
>> Speaking truly, I think I understand why there is so little effort
>> from people with the ideas. Since the last year Google forbids
>> students to apply more than 2 times, it means that most of the
>> applicants will be newcomers and, most probably, they will not be
>> able to prepare some extensive proposal/design for a project. It is
>> just too difficult to prepare a good proposal for a project so big
>> in size. So it might be that the quality of last year proposals
>> discouraged people from doing this work again.
>> 
>> The only way how we can solve the issue is to prepare very
>> scope-limited tasks, such that the students would not need to learn
>> all the code (in our case we just added AVX optimizations, which are
>> limited to a scope of a couple of classes). But that is not always
>> possible or makes sense for the some projects.
>> 
>> On 15.01.2018 03:39, Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
>> I'm very discouraged to see so little movement on this. After
>> skipping GCi this past fall, are we now also considering skipping
>> GSoC? Or downsizing the number of students we are mentoring?
>> 
>> Without Ideas we will not get students. More important, we must
>> complete the Org application soon, and the Ideas page is the core of
>> that application.
>> 
>> This is good for your team and your project, in the long run. It
>> brings in new contributors and fresh ideas.
>> 
>> If you need some guidance, please read
>> 
>> 
> https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list.html
>> [3]
>> [2]
>> 
>> I should have linked to it for the last email.
>> 
>> Valorie
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 3:03 PM, Valorie Zimmerman
>> <valorie.zimmerman at gmail.com <mailto:valorie.zimmerman at gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello GSoC mentors, and teams supporting mentors,
>> 
>> TL;DR: Fill out https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas [4] [3]
>> <https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas [4] [3]>; read
>> 
>> https://community.kde.org/GSoC. Now.
>> 
>> Every year, we've asked for more time to get ramped up for GSoC,
>> and so now is the time for organizations to apply[1]. We have
>> begun to write our application, and  that means that our Ideas
>> page needs to be filled NOW, because that is the prime
>> consideration for the GSoC team once the Org Applications
>> deadline
>> has passed.
>> 
>> The quality of our ideas and the guidance they give our students
>> are the most important part of our application. Please begin
>> filling in your ideas now if you have not already, and ensure
>> that
>> that page is comprehensive, accurate and attractive. Including
>> screenshots and other images is allowed, if it enriches the idea
>> for a project. *Please ensure complete information about how to
>> contact the team*; this is crucial.
>> 
>> Also, take a look at the landing page
>> https://community.kde.org/GSoC. Experienced mentors agree that:
>> 
>> 1. commits must be made before the student proposal is
>> submitted,
>> and linked on that proposal, and
>> 
>> 2. that regular communication from the student must be initiated
>> by the student at least weekly, and we expect daily or nearly
>> daily communication with the team in a more informal way.
>> 
>> Be sure to point students to that information, as this should
>> lower the number of proposals, while raising the quality.
>> 
>> 1. https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline [5] [4]
>> <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline [5] [4]>
>> 
>> PS: If your team has an Idea, ensure that you have mentors for
>> it,
>> and that those mentors are subscribe to KDE-Soc-Mentor list.
>> Remove any ideas without mentors available, please. Now, before
>> you forget!
>> 
>> Valorie
>> 
>> --
>> http://about.me/valoriez
>> 
>> --
>> Dmitry Kazakov
>> 
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1]
>> 
> https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas#Improve_handling_for_touchpads_and_mice_with_Libinput
>> [2]
>> [2]
>> 
> https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list.html
>> [3]
>> [3] https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas [4]
>> [4] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline [5]
> 
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas#KWin
> [2]
> https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas#Improve_handling_for_touchpads_and_mice_with_Libinput
> [3]
> https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list.html
> [4] https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2018/Ideas
> [5] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline