[GSoC 2025] submit your proposal (VM plugins) by April 8

[AkihiroSuda]

This year we participate in the Google Summer of Code(GSoC) as a CNCF project, so as to facilitate contributions from open source beginners and students.

Successful contributors will receive stipends.

Register to become a contributor by April 8 (Tue) 18:00 UTC, via the GSoC website.

Idea

The idea is to make a plugin subsystem that decouples the built-in VM drivers (qemu, vz, and wsl2) into separate binaries that communicate with the main Lima binary via some RPC (probably gRPC).
This idea will improve the maintainability of the code base, and also help supporting additional VM backends (e.g., vfkit and cloud-based drivers).

• Expected Outcome:
  • Design the plugin subsystem and its RPC (probably gRPC)
  • Migrate the existing built-in VM drivers to the new plugin subsystem
  • Implement additional VM plugins if the time allows
• Recommended Skills: Go, gRPC, QEMU, macOS
• Expected project size: medium (~175 hour projects)

Technological details have been already discussed in:

• [GSoC 2025] Add framework for adding new drivers at runtime, for instance for cloud #2007

Candidates are highly suggested to join the discussion ahead of the acceptance of their proposal.
Candidates may show their proof-of-concept codes and ask us to review it, however, we will not prioritize (nor deprioritize) such candidates.

Important

Registration must be done via the GSoC website, not via the GitHub Discussions.

Eligibility

The eligibility of GSoC is limited to an open source beginner or a student (18+ years old).

Beginners are still expected to have good experience of programming and git command.

Note

An active open source contributor can be still considered a beginner, if they have been only engaged in their own projects, or projects that are only used at a single institution. See FAQs.

See also:

• FAQs
  • What are the eligibility requirements for participation?
  • How do I know if I am considered a beginner in open source development?)
• Rules
  • 7. GSoC Contributors → 1. Eligibility
• Writing a proposal
  • Elements of a Quality Proposal

Selection

We mentors (@afbjorklund and me) will mark the candidates that we are interested in.
The ranking of those candidates will be decided by CNCF.

See also:

• Contributor+proposal selection and ranking process (CNCF)

Timeline

The standard timeline (12 weeks for coding):

• Apr 8 (Tue) - 18:00 UTC: GSoC contributor application deadline
• May 8 (Thr) - 18:00 UTC: Accepted GSoC contributor projects announced
• Jun 2 (Mon): Coding officially begins!
• Aug 25 (Mon): Final week (standard coding period)

The coding period is extensible to 22 weeks at most.

See also:

• GSoC 2025
• Timeline

Links

• GSoC
• GSoC Guides
• CNCF Mentoring Initiatives

[AkihiroSuda]

This year's GSoC has an interesting requirement https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/slot-allocation

Never accept a proposal unless a mentor has had at least one conversation with the GSoC contributor. Many people can write great proposals, especially with the help of AI, that doesn't mean they have the skills or drive to be a great GSoC contributor for your community.