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Dart GSoC 2024 Project Ideas

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Liam Appelbe edited this page Feb 7, 2024 · 20 revisions

A list of Google Summer of Code project ideas for Dart.

For GSoC related discussions please use the dart-gsoc group.

Potential mentors

Project Application Process

All projects assume familiarity with Dart (and sometimes Flutter). Aspiring applicants are encouraged to learn Dart and try to write some code.

Applicants are welcome to find and fix bugs in Dart or some of the packages written by the Dart team. However, getting reviews can take a long time as code owners may be busy working on new features. So instead of requiring applicants to fix a good first bug, we suggest that applicants write a working code sample relevant for the proposed project.

The code sample can be attached to the application as a secret gist (please use secret gists, and do not share these with other applicants). Suggested ideas below includes proposed "Good Sample Projects".

Do not spend too much energy on this piece of sample code, we just want to see that you can code something relevant -- and that this sample code can run and do something non-trivial. Be aware that we have a limited number of mentors available, and will only be able to accept a few applicants.

Applications can be submitted through the summerofcode.withgoogle.com website. Applicants are encouraged to submit draft proposals, linking to Google Docs with permission for mentors to comment. See also the contributor guide on writing a proposal.

IMPORTANT: Remember to submit final proposals before the April 2nd deadline.

Idea: FFIgenpad

  • Possible Mentor(s): @dcharkes @mannprerak2 @eyebrowsoffire
  • Difficulty: Hard
  • Project size: Large (350 hours)
  • Skills: C, WASM, Web development, Dart

Description:

Original idea: A web interface in which you paste a C header in a textbox on the left, and it outputs dart:ffi bindings generated by package:ffigen in a textbox on the right. (Inspiration is https://godbolt.org/ which does this for a C file on the left and assembly on the right.)

In order to avoid needing a server to do the backend, we'd like to compile the Dart code in package:ffigen and libclang to WASM. That way everything can run in the browser.

Good Sample Project:

  • Compile some C code to WASM and call it from a web app.
  • Compile some Dart code to WasmGC and call it from a web app.
  • Explore compiling libclang from the llvm repository to WASM.

Idea: Swift/ObjC compatibility tool

  • Possible Mentor(s): @liamappelbe
  • Difficulty: Hard
  • Project size: Large (350 hours)
  • Skills: Swift

Description:

package:ffigen allows Dart to interact with ObjC. Swift modules can be invoked from ObjC (and Dart through ffi), but only if the classes and methods have been annotated with @objc. So if a user wants to interact with a Swift module they don't own from Dart, they need to write a wrapper module that mirrors the API, but has @objc annotations.

It should be possible to write a tool that can automatically generate this ObjC compatibility wrapper. The official Swift parsing library is written in Swift, so the tool should probably also be written in Swift. In fact, the candidate doesn't even really need any Dart experience, just Swift and ObjC.

Good Sample Project: Use the Swift parsing library to load a module and print some of its metadata (e.g. print a list of the classes in the module).

A great project proposal will also talk about which Swift language features can be feasibly supported by this tool. For example, is it possible to write an @objc wrapper method for an async Swift method? What would that look like? Swift is a modern language, and ObjC is not, so there are probably a lot of features that will be problematic to wrap in a compatibility class.

Idea: JNIgen transformations

  • Possible Mentor(s): @HosseinYousefi
  • Difficulty: Hard
  • Project size: Large (350 hours)
  • Skills: Dart, Java

Description: Add the ability to rename, exclude, convert to operators, add members, and generally transform the classes and methods using visitor pattern. Something like this:

Config(
  visitors: [Foo2BarRenamer()], // User passes the visitor to config
);

class Foo2BarRenamer extends JnigenVisitor {
  void visitClass(Class c) {
    if (c.name == 'foo') c.name = 'bar';
    c.visitMethods(this);
    // ...
  }
  // ...
}

Good Sample Project: Create a simple renamer/excluder visitor, so JNIgen users can pass that in, and rename/exclude classes, methods, and fields. You will have to create a user-facing AST that wraps the original AST. For the sample project, the wrapper AST could only expose name or included properties.

Idea: Integrate OkHttp with Dart

Description: Write a flutter plugin that wraps the OkHttp package using package:jnigen and implements the package:http Client interface. Time permitting, the plugin will also implement the package:web_socket_channel WebSocketChannel interface. This will allow us to provide several features requested by our users such as:

  • Support for KeyStore PrivateKeys (#50669)
  • Support for the system proxy (#50434)
  • Support for user-installed certificates (#50435)

Successfully completely this project will likely involve:

  • Determining exactly what APIs should be make available in Dart.
  • Creating a JNI bindings for those APIs using package:jnigen.
  • Creating a package:http Client implementation using those bindings.
  • Verifying that the Client implementation passes the conformance tests.

You'll like working on this project because:

  • It will be easy to implement incrementally. After the basic functionality is present, more advanced APIs can be added as time permits.
  • There are existing conformance tests to validate the correctness of the work.
  • Dart users want it!

A good project proposal will describe what Java APIs are necessary to implement the package:http Client interface e.g. OkHttpClient.newCall(). An excellent proposal will use asynchronous APIs.

Good Sample Project: Try writing a small Flutter application that makes HTTP requests using OkHttp bindings created with package:jnigen. You can use package:cronet_http and package:java_http as starting points.

Tip

Look at the package:cronet_http jnigen.yaml and build.gradle files.

Template:

Copy this template.

Idea: ...

  • Possible Mentor(s):
  • Difficulty: Easy / Hard
  • Project size: Small (90) / Medium (175 hours) / Large (350 hours)
  • Skills: ...

Description: ...

Good Sample Project: ...

Important

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