Vim joins the Google Summer of Code!

Fix bugs

Vim has many, many features. We don't really need more, we do need the existing features to work reliably and predictably.

The todo list has many issues that Vim users reported. See ":help todo" or this link. These need to be sorted out and when it's a real bug it must be fixed. Or perhaps the help text need to be adjusted. Some changes may require discussing the solutions on the vim-dev maillist.

This can be worked on by more than one person.

Improve regexp performance

Last year two students worked on another regexp engine, which should improve pattern searches and esp. syntax highlighting. An article with the basic idea can be found here. This paper from Nikolai Weibull may also be useful: Theoretical Foundation of Regular Expressions and Text Editors.

By the end of the 2007 SoC we had two versions of the regexp library, but they are not ready to be included in Vim. The next step is to merge these two and add the code to the existing regexp engine, in such a way that the new engine is used for the patterns it supports, falling back to the old one otherwise (e.g., for backreferences).

The new code must be 100% compatible with the existing Vim regexp engine. Extensive tests must be made to assure this.

Make Vim work as a plugin with Eclipse

Many people use Eclipse and many people use Vim. But they still don't work together very well.

This task is to continue work on existing solutions.

Make Vim do on-the-fly code checking

If you edit Java code with Eclipse, it highlights errors while making changes. This is very useful to quickly fix the code you are working on.

This does not need to be instantly. An alternative is to use the existing quickfix mechanism, but instead of listing the errors and jumping to each one separately, turn the errors into highlights. With a popup or preview window to show the error message.

Notes for applications

Last year I have been a bit flexible with accepting students, but this has caused some problems. Please keep the following items in mind when you apply for a Summer Of Code holiday job:

• Clearly state your level of study and experience.
• You are expected to work full-time. It's a 40 hour per week job. So don't expect to do this next to studies or another job. You can take a few days off, but you can't go on a long holiday or take a couple of weeks off for an exam (you can do an exam in your spare time, of course).
• There are fixed start and end dates. These are related to the evaluations. Check the SoC FAQ. This means that in countries where the holidays are in a different month you will not be able to join. Sorry about that.
• You are expected to provide a weekly status report.
• We don't provide a computer for you, make sure you can arrange one do your work on.