GSoC/2024/Ideas - KDE Community Wiki

Guidelines

Information for Students

These ideas were contributed by our developers and users. They are sometimes vague or incomplete. If you wish to submit a proposal based on these ideas, you are urged to contact the developers and find out more about the particular suggestion you're looking at.

Becoming accepted as a Google Summer of Code student is quite competitive. Accepted students typically have thoroughly researched the technologies of their proposed project and have been in frequent contact with potential mentors. Simply copying and pasting an idea here will not work. On the other hand, creating a completely new idea without first consulting potential mentors rarely works.

When writing your proposal or asking for help from the general KDE community don't assume people are familiar with the ideas here. KDE is really big!

If there is no specific contact given you can ask questions on the general KDE development list [email protected]. See the KDE mailing lists page for information on available mailing lists and how to subscribe.

Note

These are all proposals! We are open to new ideas you might have!! Do you have an awesome idea you want to work on with KDE but that is not among the ideas below? That's cool. We love that! But please do us a favor: Get in touch with a mentor early on and make sure your project is realistic and within the scope of KDE.

Adding a Proposal

Note

Follow the template of other proposals!

Sample project

Project type: Coding / Web Development / Promo / Translation

Brief explanation:

Expected results:

Knowledge Prerequisite:

Mentor:

When adding an idea to this section, please include the following data:

if the application is not widely known, a description of what it does and where its code lives
a brief explanation (2-5 sentences)
the expected size of the project (small-90 hours, medium-175 hours or large-350 hours)
the expected results
pre-requisites for working on your project (skills required/preferred)
if applicable, links to more information or discussions
mailing list or IRC channel for your application/library/module
your name and email address for contact (if you're willing to be a mentor)
if possible, an easy, medium or hard rating of the project

If you are not a developer but have a good idea for a proposal, get in contact with relevant developers first.

Ideas

Project: Something that you're totally excited about

Brief explanation: Do you have an awesome idea you want to work on with KDE but that is not among the ideas below? That's cool. We love that! But please do us a favor: Get in touch with a mentor early on and make sure your project is realistic and within the scope of KDE. That will spare you and us a lot of frustration.

Expected results: Something you and KDE loves

Knowledge Prerequisite: Probably C++ and Qt but depends on your project

Duration: Mention one of ~90, ~175 or ~350 hours of effort necessary to finish the project. Use only one of these three project classes and don't come up with other numbers here.

Difficulty:: Easy, medium or difficult project

Mentor: Try to see who in KDE is interested in what you want to work on and approach them. If you are unsure you can always ask in #kde-soc:kde.org on matrix.

Python bindings for KDE Frameworks

Brief explanation: While Qt itself, has official bindings to Python, this is not the case for the KDE Frameworks. This project hopes to add python bindings to as many frameworks as possible during the summer.

Expected results: Make it easier to build Python apps with Qt

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++ and Python knowledge. Having read https://doc.qt.io/qtforpython-6/ https://doc.qt.io/qtforpython-6/shiboken6/index.html and https://www.kdab.com/creating-python-bindings-for-qt-libraries/ is a good start

Duration: Flexible depending on the amount of frameworks we want to cover during this GSoC.

Difficulty:: Medium

Mentor: Carl Schwan - @carl:kde.org on matrix

Port Arianna to Foliate-js

Brief explanation: Arianna is an ebook reader and currently use epub.js, which is not really maintained anymore. The idea would be to port it https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate-js which is modern epub renderer used by foliate.

Expected results: A nice and modern epub renderer for Arianna

Knowledge Prerequisite: Javascript knowledge and minimal C++ knowledge to build the project

Duration: 175 hours

Difficulty:: Medium

Mentor: Carl Schwan - @carl:kde.org on matrix

Project: Adding support for multiple numeral system in GCompris

Brief explanation: For now, GCompris numbers are always displayed as Western Arabic numbers (0, 1, ...). There are several systems in the world and Qt/Javascript provides us ways to select the ones we want. The aim of the task is to add the handling of multiple systems and update all the places we display numbers to use the new system. A bit more details are available in https://phabricator.kde.org/T16332.

Expected results: Ability to change numeral system and change it on all the code.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Basics on Javascript and C++

Duration: ~175 hours

Difficulty:: Easy

Mentors: Emmanuel Charruau @allon:kde.org / Johnny Jazeix @johnnyj:kde.org. But please join #gcompris:kde.org to discuss with the team.

Project: Work on one or more KDE Connect tasks

Project type: Coding

Brief explanation: KDE Connect is a desktop and phone app that lets you devices communicate. https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

Expected results: Work on some of the tasks detailed here: https://invent.kde.org/network/kdeconnect-meta/-/issues

Knowledge Prerequisite: The desktop app is written in C++/Qt, the Android app in Java & Kotlin, and the iOS app in Swift.

Mentor: Albert Vaca Cintora <[email protected]>

Project: Harden sddm-kcm

Project type: Coding

Brief explanation: sddm-kcm is a system settings module to setup sddm, the SUSE security team has found some issues that while not immediately exploitable we would ideally fix. It would also include improving KAuth to support passing file descriptors between the main process and the helper instead of paths.

Expected results: Most/All of the issues identified are fixed.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Some C++/Unix/polkit knowledge is welcome.

Duration: 175 hours

Difficulty:: Medium/Hard

Mentor: Albert Astals Cid <[email protected]>

Krita

Brief explanation: In Pixel Art dedicated programs the line painted by the "pencil" tool (1px solid pixel brush) is not just following the user's mouse/pen's coordinates, but removing duplicate pixels in a smart way, resulting in a so-called "pixel perfect" line. Example: [1] The task is to implement such feature in Krita.

Expected results: A feature in the Pixel Engine working as described

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt

Duration: ~175h

Mentor: TBD

Feature request link: https://krita-artists.org/t/pixel-perfect-line-setting-for-pixel-art-brushes/42629

Technical details link: https://rickyhan.com/jekyll/update/2018/11/22/pixel-art-algorithm-pixel-perfect.html

~ 350h ~

=> Project: Extend Arrange Docker for layers plus snapping

Brief explanation: Currently, the arrange docker only supports aligning and distributing vector objects of a singlet vector layer. This project aims to extend the arrange docker support for layers and masks too.

Expected results: All the current operations available in Arrange docker could be done with the layers.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt, CMake

Duration: ~350h

Mentor: Wolthera

Link: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338002

=> Project (Advanced): Ribbon Brush

Brief explanation: In other art programs there is a brush engine/tip that can take a raster image and while painting a stroke, distort copies of that image in a way that they seemlessly fit together. It's most common usages are chains, laces at the end of the clothes, braids, textured strings etc. Few examples: [2] A picture of technical explanation: [3]

Note that this is an advanced project and you need to be a good student to be able to complete it (you will have help but you need to have a solid foundation beforehand). We also require either some code examples or some kind of proof-of-concept in the proposal. Make sure to contact us early (contact info above).

Expected results: Fully usable brush tip or brush engine

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt, math

Duration: ~350h

Mentor: TBD

Link: https://krita-artists.org/t/ribbon-brush/31346

Implement a Computer Opponent for a Mancala Game

Brief explanation: Mancala games such as Bao, Bohnenspiel, Kalah, Oware, Pallanghuzi and Sungka are strategy games played all over the world. The project would entail creating a KDE application for a Mancala game, with a main focus on a good computerized opponent. As an example [Kalah has been solved](https://naml.us/paper/kalah/) but only certain board sizes maybe fully implemented to work on a typical desktop or mobile device.

Expected results: A good computerized opponent

Knowledge Prerequisite: Some programming background in a compiled language such as C, C++, Java, Kotlin, Rust but not limited to these.

Duration: 175 hours

Difficulty:: Medium

Mentor: Benson Muite - benson_muite at emailplus dot org