GSoC/2019/Project Ideas

Introduction

This wiki page lists all GSoC project ideas and their related software projects under the umbrella of the XSF.

Please note that to assess students applying to GSoC for XSF projects we want them to have submitted some small patches to one of the XMPP projects in advance, as this gives us an idea of their general ability to interact with the projects and submit patches. These should only be a day or two's work, and shouldn't be onerous!

A list of teaser tasks is given in the projects section, but please join the chat rooms for the respective projects and discuss them there, where mentors will be able to help you and know what you're up to. There are different teasers for different codebases, and more projects with new teasers will be appearing here over the next few days.

More information about XMPP and the XSF at GSOC 2019 can be found here.

How to add your project idea

If you do not have already an account on this wiki, then ask someone in the jdev@conference.jabber.org chatroom for help (sorry, we don't allow open registration because we're trying to avoid the spammers).

Next, copy the template below to create a new entry and fill out all the required information.

Example Project Template

Website: https://example.org/

Source Code: https://example.org/source

Description:: This is just an example project which can be used as template.

Project Contact Person: John Doe <john.doe@example.org>

List of Teaser Tasks: https://example.org/issues?tag=gsoc-teaser

Contact chat: chat@muc.example.org

Contact forum: https://discuss.example.org/

Idea A

Brief explanation: Add support for A to example project.

Involved Technologies: Smalltalk, FORTRAN77, COBOL

Mentor(s): Foo Bar (TheBatz) <foo.bar@exampole.org>

Deliverables / Expected Results:

• Foo
• Bar
• Baz

Milestones:

1. Implement parser and unit tests for parsing
2. Implement protocol logic
3. Interoperability tests against a different implementation

A is a promising new XMPP protocol extension. Its specification includes a ton of buzzwords ranging from blockchain to machine learning. But since it is very young protocol, there are no existing implementations. The goal of this project is to change that situation.

Idea B

Brief explanation: Add support for A to example project.

Involved Technologies: Smalltalk, FORTRAN77, COBOL

Mentor(s): Foo Bar (TheBatz) <foo.bar@exampole.org>

Deliverables / Expected Results:

• Foo
• Bar
• Baz

Milestones:

1. Implement parser and unit tests for parsing
2. Implement protocol logic
3. Interoperability tests against a different implementation

A is a promising new XMPP protocol extension. Its specification includes a ton of buzzwords ranging from blockchain to machine learning. But since it is very young protocol, there are no existing implementations. The goal of this project is to change that situation.

List of Project Ideas

Ignite Realtime's Smack

Website: https://igniterealtime.org/projects/smack/index.jsp

Source Code: https://github.com/igniterealtime/Smack/

Description:: Ignite Realtime creates free and open source software with and around the XMPP ecosystem. Smack is an XMPP client library for Java/Android applications.

Project Contact Person: Florian Schmaus <flo@geekplace.eu>

List of Teaser Tasks: Smack Teaser Tasks

Contact chat: open_chat@conference.igniterealtime.org

Contact forum: https://discourse.igniterealtime.org/c/smack

WebSocket (RFC 7395) support

Brief explanation: Add support for XMPP over WebSocket (RFC 7395) to the XMPP Client Library Smack.

Involved Technologies: Android compatible Java 8, WebSockets

Mentor(s): Paul Schaub (vanitasvitae) <vanitasvitae@fsfe.org>

Deliverables / Expected Results:

• Being able to connect to XMPP services via WebSocket.
• Definition of a WebSocket interface on top of the used WebSocket libraries, allowing for different WebSocket implementations.

Currently Smack can establish connections via TCP/IP and HTTP via BOSH. WebSockets are yet another way to connect to a server.

Prosody IM

'Website: https://prosody.im/

Source Code: https://hg.prosody.im/

Description:: Prosody is a lightweight XMPP server that aims to be easy to set up and configure, and efficient with system resources.

Project Contact Person: Matthew Wild <mwild1@gmail.com>

List of Teaser Tasks: https://issues.prosody.im/?q=state%3Dopen+difficulty%3Deasy

Contact chat: prosody@conference.prosody.im

Standalone mod_firewall

Brief explanation: This project would produce a version of mod_firewall that runs standalone and can be connected with any XEP-0114 compliant server.

Involved Technologies: Lua, XMPP

Mentor(s): Matthew Wild (MattJ) <mwild1@gmail.com>, Kim Alvefur (Zash)

Deliverables / Expected Results:

• Standalone server-independent mod_firewall
• Server-side implementation that uses external mod_firewall for determining whether/how to to route a stanza.

Milestones:

1. Design and document server-independent protocol for communicating with external mod_firewall.
2. Develop standalone mod_firewall process that connects to a XEP-0114 compliant server and implements above protocol.
3. Develop server-side code to communicate with external mod_firewall and allow it to filter stanzas.

Prosody's mod_firewall is a rule-based XMPP-layer firewall that is useful for security and anti-spam purposes. However it currently only works with Prosody, and needs to be loaded into the main process.

This project would produce a version of mod_firewall that runs standalone and can be connected with any XEP-0114 compliant server.

The project would include:

- Protocol design: develop and document (in XEP form) a protocol whereby a server may submit a stanza to the standalone mod_firewall and receive a decision. - Coding (Lua): adapt mod_firewall's core code to run standalone, and connect to servers as a component implementing this protocol. - Coding: Additionally add support for the new protocol to an XMPP server of your choice.

Prosody plugin installer

Brief explanation: This project would produce an easy way to install and manage plugins for the Prosody server.

Involved Technologies: Lua

Mentor(s): Matthew Wild (MattJ) <mwild1@gmail.com>, Kim Alvefur (Zash)

Deliverables / Expected Results:

• Commands to install, update, remove and list installed plugins.
• Scripts to build and manage a repository of plugins.

Milestones:

1. Implement command to install a plugin from a repository
2. Implement commands to remove and update installed plugins
3. Develop scripts to build a plugin repository.

Prosody has hundreds of community modules that provide additional features and extensions to the core server. Currently installing these is a manual process that currently involves a number of manual steps.

The goal of this project would be to produce simple commands to install, update and remove community modules. Rather than inventing a new package manager, the project would ideally build on top of the luarocks project.

Implement MIX

Brief explanation: This project would add support for the MIX suite of XEPs to Prosody

Involved Technologies: Lua, XMPP

Mentor(s): Matthew Wild (MattJ) <mwild1@gmail.com>, Kim Alvefur (Zash)

Deliverables / Expected Results:

• A server with support for creating and joining MIX channels.
• A suite of Scansion tests for testing correct MIX behaviour

Milestones:

1. Implement support for creating, joining and exchanging messages with MIX rooms.
2. Implement channel administration (XEP-406)

MIX is a new protocol for group chats in XMPP that provides a modern alternative to the existing MUC protocol. It is not currently widely implemented, but this project would provide a server-side implementation against which clients can be built and tested.

Basic support may be found in experimental branches of Conversations, but it is expected that this implementation may be tested through use of Scansion and/or other client-side testing tools and libraries.