Nouveau Summer Project : The End and The Beginning

The following are the IRC nicks of two Nouveau contributors without whom I wouldn't be where I am and none of this would be possible. I could never thank them enough for keeping up with my noobness. Thanks guys!

mupuf : Martin Peres  
Email: martin.peres@labri.fr | mupuf.org

mwk : Marcin Kościelnicki  
Email: koriakin@0x04.net | http://0x04.net/~mwk/reblog/

The end and the beginning refers to two things, the end of the X.Org EVOC program and the beginning of a new Nouveau contributor. The experience till now has proved to massive learning opportunity, at the same time rewarding as I was able to actually implement code and obtain results.

I started off as someone who was completely alien to such low-level programming and have grown to be someone who actually loves it more than the stuff he used to do. My student life began as web-developer, engaging in which gave instant results and was hugely motivating at every step to progress further. It has been a long journey from there to where I am. After working with some awesome people at Nouveau, I realize that thinking at different levels which is required not, only makes you a better developer but also enhances your thought process. Personally, I feel like they have a compiler in their head. :P

Very early on, I knew and realized that a very important link in the documentation was missing. Even though the documentation had more detail and relevant information than I expected to, it still left a lot of room for newbies to get lost in. I feel this was the reason I had felt that documentation needed A LOT of work to be done. While working however I felt that it was nicely written and had most of the required elements in good detail. I discussed about the missing link with mwk and mupuf. mwk showed an unexpected level of interest and came up with something truly remarkable. With some small recommendations from me, he created the intro.txt. This document not only fills the hole and directs newbies to a starting point but does so very beautifully complete with schematics ( I have no clue how he made the schematics! They are amazing!). You can find it here:

https://github.com/pathscale/envytools/blob/master/hwdocs/intro.txt

The second phase of EVOC was no doubt more productive as compared to the first but was also filled with quite a few hurdles. This meant that I had hoped to achieve more but couldn't. Firstly, the pdaemon to host communication which I had thought was ready to go. showed many bugs during testing. Then very early in this phase, I had caught fever. Catching a fever was not the main issue, the issue was that I had to run around applying for my visa while I was sick. A two day fever extended to a 2-week turmoil. Soon enough the proposed EVOC deadline was approaching and my college had officially started. Even though I was on a leave till the date of deadline, I ran in to trouble because I was repeatedly called to attend meetings as I am the student head of multiple college activities. Hence, I felt I had not implemented sufficient amount of code by the end date. Now, I had to manage between college and Nouveau. This would still have been easy but at the same I also had to get stuff ready for my trip to XDC2012 and prepare for some college exams. These exams turned up exactly a day before my flight i.e. tomorrow! So now, I will get back to my studies so that I can give two exams tomorrow and rush to catch my train to Delhi. It is going to be awesome to say the least. :P I guess I am a person who likes to keep himself overly busy. Technical fest of the college and Software Freedom Day are just around the corner. Oh! and how could I forget the college placements (recruitment process by organizations to hire students; I do need a job ;) ) which starts just over a week from now!