Below is a list of project ideas for [GSoC](https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2014) 2014. All these projects require familiarity with the Nimrod programming, or at minimum, experience with similar programming languages such as C, C#, Java, Python, etc.
We encourage you to join the #nimrod IRC channel on Freenode to discuss these projects with the community and our mentors. You may also join our [Forum](http://forum.nimrod-lang.org) to ask questions there.
The following list of projects are just some ideas that the community and the developers have come up with. You will be contributing to a programming language so there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to the projects that you can work on, this list is certainly not comprehensive so we are happy to hear any suggestions that you may have.
Many programming languages, in particular Lua, offer coroutines as a way to provide light-weight collaborative tasking. Nimrod supports "closure iterators" which are comparable to Python's generators to accomplish the same. However closure iterators are much more limited as they cannot capture the call stack completely. The best example to see the limitations of Nimrod's current way is that iterators cannot be recursive.
Nimrod currently supports C, C++, Objective C and JavaScript code generation. However to run efficiently on GPUs an OpenCL backend is required. The easy way to do this is to copy OpenCL's low level mode of operation with its different ``private``, ``local``, ``global`` storage and simply provide a nimrodic syntax for OpenCL. So apart from syntactic sugar users get all of Nimrod's meta programming advantages plus good integration into Nimrod's infrastructure.
Most of the popular garbage collected languages of today require a separately distributed run-time environment, providing only a predetermined set of garbage collection algorithms. This leaves little room for experimentation with various approaches and condemns GC researchers to develop and test their algorithms on specialized platforms such as the [Jikes RVM](http://jikesrvm.org/) that have limited practical significance.
In contrast, in Nimrod, the garbage collection algorithm is chosen at compile-time and embedded in the resulting stand-alone native executable. This enables the users to pick a GC algorithm that's most suitable to their project and allows for a proliferation of GC algorithms, developed by independent groups and individuals, without requiring any modifications to be made to the standard Nimrod distribution.
The Nimrod code generator and type system can provide various GC roots marking strategies, various kinds of write/read barriers and all necessary static type information (e.g. static cycle analysis) and a GC implementation will consist only of a single Nimrod module (supplied as a command-line parameter) that
provides configuration for the code generator and implements the logic of the garbage collection algorithm. This module will be compiled as C code with the rest of the program and it could be easily debugged using standard C/C++ debugging and profiling tools.
* Allow the nimrod bootstrap process to integrate the nimrod standard library source code and other associated resources into the nimrod binary, to be used by the nimrod binary when compiling source code. The included library modules should be overridable, either by a switch passed to the nimrod executable, or by placing an actual library file in a pre-determined path.
The Nimrod standard library currently lacks a YAML parsing module. This task requires you to read the YAML specification and to create a module which will be able to parse YAML data into an AST. Subsequently the parser can be used to create a high-level API to access the data.
* Allow the fsmonitor module to work on Microsoft Windows by using native api's to gather information about changes in monitored files and directories.
* Revise the fsmonitor module api to decouple Unix/Linux file handle paradigms (such as using the poll method in in the sockets module) from the api, allowing easier implementations of multiple native backends.
* Implement a procedure which uses native stat-like calls on Linux, Mac, Windows, and other operating systems to gather detailed information about specific file system objects. Allow the bypassing of symlinks
* Add comments to the compiler internals, documenting the various mechanisms and mechanics the compiler uses to analyze and transform nimrod code to the code of the specified backend.
* Reduce the number of assumptions the Nimrod builder makes about its host system, in order to reduce configuration restrictions. Assumptions include location and usage of external tools, such as git.
* Implement benchmark tests in the builder and generate graphs showing the time taken to perform those benchmarks on the Nimbuild site. This can include bootstrap times, and test times too.
* Generate images showing the status of the build to be shown in Nimrod's Github repo and/or Nimrod's website.
* Improve the download tables on Nimbuild's homepage and generate embeddable download tables for the Nimrod website.
Babel is the Nimrod package manager. It is currently very basic and some important features are still missing. Babel packages are stored in user-controlled repositories with support for Git and Mercurial currently present.
**Possible tasks:**
* Add support for other VCS' alongside Git and Mercurial.
* Create a website which tracks packages similar to hackage, npm, the [DUB registry](http://code.dlang.org/) etc.
* Add support for the removal of packages.
* Automate the package submission process.
* Expand the babel tester to test more dependency scenarios.