The main page is at SummerOfCode2009.
Applying
I am a student
You should have applied by April 3rd, 19:00 UTC on the Google Summer of Code application.
Familiarize yourself with the communication tools of Debian:
IRC on general or team development channels
the general and particular Mailing-lists of various teams
this wiki
Join the communication channels of the teams or persons involved with the subject you would like to work on and discuss it. Don't be afraid to suggest seemingly crazy or vague ideas, we'll help you and give you suggestions. If you're lost (or even not!), drop in the communication channels of the Summer of Code team mentioned below. Remember that early preparation is a guarantee that your proposal will be better!
There is some interesting introductory documentation on this wiki about what Debian is and what Debian is for a developer. A lot of information about being a Summer of Code student can be found on the Advice for students page.
We also have a template that we would recommend students to use for their application: ?application template
I am a Debian developer
Your help is much needed from general organization to individual mentoring. Come see us on IRC or on the mailing-list mentioned below.
This year, we want to improve the communication between Summer of Code projects and the whole Debian community during the whole Summer of Code program, from student/project selection to final code integration into production through testing and feedback.
A lot of information can be found on the Advice for mentors page. A practical mentoring guide can be found here.
Proposals
Packaging
Large dataset manager: download and update local copies of public datasets, and integrate them in Debian with the tools we packaged.
Mergemaster: perform 3-way merge of config files on upgrades by keeping a copy of original config files. (Mentor to be found)
Aptitude packages query UI and language: improve the GTK+ search UI and language for complex packages queries
Aptitude search ranking and presentation: improve the presentation of search results with substring highlighting, relevancy ranking...
Aptitude history tracking: extend and build on the packages actions history tracking features of Aptitude
Aptitude mixed-install/apt-pinning integration: high-level support of mixed-installs (eg. testing/unstable) and apt-pinning in Aptitude
Improve non-networked package management: Develop a framework for package management on non-networked computers (Mentor to be found)
Home directory cleaner: Application to assist users to remove left-over configuration and data files in their home directories
Distribution-independent update-manager: make update-manager distribution-independent, creating a package with core-functionality that can be extended with distribution-specific code
Debian control files - Parsing and Manipulation Library: a library to parse and manipulate Debian control files (debian/control, copyright, changelog in particular). Capable of parsing in either quirks or strict mode; manipulation of control data; exporting back to the appropriate files. Includes creation of Perl-Qt4 bindings and a Debconf interface using Qt4. (See debconf-Qt4 frontend, below)
Debian Installer
MTD support in d-i: add MTD installation support to the Debian Installer
Debian-Installer support for GNU/kFreeBSD: replace the currently used FreeBSD sysinstall with Debian-Installer running possibly under a FreeBSD kernel
Hardware support
Debian Cloud Computing with Amazon and Eucalyptus: create official Debian images and tools for the Amazon EC2 cloud-computing environment
Debian Loongson 2F n32 ABI port: Create a new Debian "loongson2f" port that is 30% faster than Debian "mipsel" (MIPS-1, o32 ABI) on Gdium and Yeeloong notebooks, and more!
Blends
blends webtools: enhancing DebianPureBlends webtools by using UltimateDebianDatabase
Bug tracking
Debbugs Read/Write Soap Interface: overhaul the existing read-only SOAP Debbugs interface with submission and manipulation capabilities (Mentor to be found)
Debbugs Web UI: Modern web interface for submitting and manipulating bugs.debian.org's bugs
Mylyn plugin for debbugs: Plugin for Mylyn to support debbugs, allowing the management of Debian bug reports from the inside of Eclipse.
Building infrastructure
Building a new interface for Wanna-build using PostgreSQL: replace the existing setup of multiple MLDBM databases with an extensible and flexible relational database for use both by wanna-build and other tools such as web CGI scripts
Archive
Debtags Archive Integration: Integrate Debtags into the Debian Infrastructure and the required tools to replace the current archive sections. (Mentor to be found)
Packages Website (packages.debian.org)
Packages Website RDBMS Backend: Migrate packages.d.o from the current BerkeleyDB backend to a RDBMS, preferably PostgreSQL
Packages Website Xapian Search: Implement a results ranking algorithm and keyword highlighting presentation (à la Google)
Regular Website (www.debian.org)
Website VCS Transition: Migrate www.d.o from the current CVS system to a more modern and better accepted version control system, possibly git?
KDE
debconf-Qt4 frontend Writing a debconf-qt4 frontend. This also requires to work on perl-qt4 bindings. (Mentor to be found)
KDE/Qt4 based package manager Create or finalize a good package manager for KDE. (Mentor to be found)
* Your proposal here ?ProposalTemplate: Use this proposal as a sample.