Hi Marek,
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:13 AM, M C kcmark@gmail.com wrote:
Hi everyone,
My name is Marek Chmiel, I am a student a NEIU. I am studying computer science and network security related topics. This semester I had spent a fair amount of time writing crypt related functions with java, and became very interested in Cryptography. After looking over the suggested ideas on SOC official wine wiki I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was already a crypt related idea suggested. I have a great understanding of c++ and java, and though I know c I have not worked with it as much as the other languages.
Implementing a DSS provider sounds like an awesome task to tackle, if someone has never written code for Linux, can they take on such a task? Are there any significant issues implementing a DSS that you guys know about? Any crypt GSOC ideas would you suggest for someone who has wrote limited amount of code for Linux?
If you know C, you ought to be able to code in Linux. I don't see that being a significant hurdle.
I don't know of any significant issues implementing a DSS provider. The usual gotchas with coding for Wine apply here: tests, tests, tests. Solid test cases are a prerequisite to adding new code to Wine, and if a SoC project produces nothing but a solid test suite, it's still a win. I expect this is a pretty straightforward project for someone motivated, so I'm happy to see someone interested in picking it up.
What I would also like to do, besides implementing a DSS provider, is to fix most if not all of the crypt related bugs that remain in Wine. This might seem like more than most people can chew, but viewing the Bug Tracking database it appears that there aren't that many crypt related bugs and might even be caused by a lack of a DSS provider (Hopefully this wouldn't create a entire new series of bugs).
There aren't that many bugs, it's true. I don't think many of them relate specifically to DSS, and some may be quite challenging to fix. But the more you can fix, the better :)
As you dig more into the project, I'm sure you'll have more specific questions. By all means ask once you get there.
(Also, I'll try to be a mentor, should your project be accepted. I may be on vacation part of the summer, hopefully not enough to impact your work too much.) --Juan