Perl 5 Core Grant Proposal: Zefram maintaining the Perl 5 core
Sun, 04-Jun-2017 by
Makoto Nozaki
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Before we vote on this proposal, we would like to get feedback from the Perl community. Please leave feedback in the comments or, if you prefer, email your comments to makoto at perlfoundation.org.
**IRC nickname:** Zefram
**project title:** Zefram maintaining the Perl 5 core
###synopsis
I'd like a grant to work on the Perl 5 core, concentrating on
tricky and obscure issues of the core internals. The grant would extend
to the full range of a core committer's activities, along the lines of
my past work on the core. The grant would allow me to put much more
time into the Perl 5 core than I have been able to recently.
###benefits to Perl 5 core maintenance
this grant would overcome the present
limitation on the amount of time I can devote to Perl, namely my need for
an income. The core would benefit from the increased application of my
rare knowledge and skills, including my deep understanding of much of
the core internals. It would especially benefit through the fixing of
troublesome bugs, and more generally through the addressing of issues
that require in-depth familiarity with the internals.
###deliverable elements
Like the similar grants for Dave Mitchell, Nicholas Clark, and Tony
Cook, I do not propose specific technical deliverables for this project.
The details of what work I tackle would be led by the exigencies of bug
reports and the direction of discussions among core developers (on the
public mailing list, the IRC channel, and at times on the closed security
report mailing list). The main deliverable, then, is time spent on core
maintenance work, at a rate of USD 50 per hour.
Secondary deliverables are the required reports, weekly to p5p and
monthly to TPF. These will list the issues worked on. The grant manager
representing p5p can see how this relates to my code commits and mailing
list activity, providing an opportunity to raise any concerns.
###project details
This project covers the full range of core maintenance activity that I
have performed in the past. Within this mix, I would favour activity
of which the fewest people are capable: work that takes advantage of my
particular knowledge of core internals and my particular abilities.
In general, the highest priority work would be the diagnosis and
resolution of bugs that appear to involve obscure internals. (Note that
diagnosis can radically change the appearance of a bug in this respect.)
Activities covered by this grant would include, but are not limited to:
* diagnosing reported bugs
* fixing bugs, whether reported or not
* discussing core issues on the p5p mailing list
* writing and improving documentation
* code refactoring
* release engineering
* implementation of new core features, where approved through discussion
Specifically excluded from this project scope is work on unapproved new
features, because of the risk of (perception of) abuse. I do not seek
a license to arbitrarily perform major speculative work on TPF's dime.
But where a new feature has been discussed prior to implementation,
and there is the appropriate consensus that it should be implemented,
then the endeavour is no longer an individual's speculation, and that
implementation work can fall within the scope of this project. Looking
back at features I have added in the past, I developed call-checker
and parser plugins without discussion, so they would not have been in
scope for this type of grant. Subroutine signatures, on the other hand,
I developed in response to a fairly detailed consensus reached on the
IRC channel, and with the pumpking's specific blessing, so that would
have been in scope.
###project schedule
This project covers 400 hours of deliverable work, which I anticipate
delivering at a rate averaging somewhere between 20 and 30 hours per week,
thus taking somewhere between three and five months. I am not committing
to any steady rate of work; extensive variance of time worked from week
to week is to be expected. I can start as soon as approved.
If the arrangement of this grant turns out to be satisfactory, I would
likely seek an extension of it on similar terms.
###biography
I'm a freelance computer programmer. I have been using Perl
since the year 2000, and C since 1990. I've been contributing to CPAN
since 2004, now having 76 distributions there, many of them XS language
extensions. I've been contributing code to the Perl 5 core since 2007.
My core development work has included diagnosis and fixing of daunting
bugs, design and implementation of new subsystems (such as parser plugins
and subroutine signatures), and much discourse on the mailing list.
**endorsed by:** Sawyer X, Matthew Horsfall, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsaker
**amount requested:** USD 20_000
**suggestions for grant manager:** Sawyer X has agreed to serve as manager.
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Comments (2)
This sounds like a great idea to me.
Sounds like an extremely good idea to me, too.
