I see many new signups here and I suppose, most of them think about contributing to BRL-CAD in this years GSoC. Welcome to our organization. Before you can start contributing, you should familiarize yourself with the software package:
For Google Summer of Code, you have to propose the programming project you want to do this summer. You can find some ideas here, but you may propose an own idea too. There are many more ideas on our website (see the third bullet above ;).
If you want to apply for GSoC with BRL-CAD, you should follow our application guidelines. Examples from past years can be found here.
If you have a question, don't hesitate to ask. We will be happy to help.
Welcome @Abhiram. You may want to have a look at https://brlcad.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/111975-Google-Summer-of-Code/topic/general/near/339394535:
If you want to apply for GSoC with BRL-CAD, you should follow our application guidelines. Examples from past years can be found here.
To our potential contributors: If you submit a proposal at https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/, the mentors can see them from their dashboard. If you want to improve it, you can do it as many times you want until the submission deadline. You may point your potential mentors (e.g. the ones mentioned in the GSoC project idea description) to your submission.
In addition, you can share a link to a the draft of your proposal, e.g. in Google docs, with the mentors and ask them for comments.
Hi @Vagabond, did you had a look at our project ideas at https://github.com/opencax/GSoC? Click the GSOC project ideas links there. Do you find there something what suites you?
Yes, I have. I am quite interested with projects #70 #71 and #24.
I'm at my fourth semester in Mathematics. But I hadn't taken vector calculus yet. So, in terms of feasibility, I would order it as #70, #71, then #24. However, in terms of interest, I would order it as #71, #70, then #24.
Hi! I am Caio, I am a PhD student at the University of Montreal and I am working on volumetric representation for real-time rendering.
I have been talking to @Sean over the past weeks to work on volumetric rendering by adding support to VDB to BRL-CAD.
I did a first version of the proposal which can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T7xRDAmhdd8vYTlRKFMW72BwK65wU0anc-2gsWpmxnc/edit?usp=sharing
I look forward to your reviews =)
Vagabond said:
Yes, I have. I am quite interested with projects #70 #71 and #24.
Do you have relevant experience?
Caio José Dos Santos Brito said:
Hi! I am Caio, I am a PhD student at the University of Montreal and I am working on volumetric representation for real-time rendering.
I have been talking to Sean over the past weeks to work on volumetric rendering by adding support to VDB to BRL-CAD.I did a first version of the proposal which can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T7xRDAmhdd8vYTlRKFMW72BwK65wU0anc-2gsWpmxnc/edit?usp=sharing
I look forward to your reviews =)
Welcome @Caio José Dos Santos Brito and thank you for the public introduction and link to your proposal draft!
Here is my project proposal for migrating src/conv to libgcv. I would like to get some feedback
It is a nice, but also, of course, a bit generic proposal. You should provide us with a patch, which shows that you know what you are talking about, in the next weeks.
working on it
(deleted)
Sean said:
Vagabond said:
Yes, I have. I am quite interested with projects #70 #71 and #24.
Do you have relevant experience?
https://github.com/desmond-rhodes This is all the experience I have. I know C++ and some OpenGL.
Hi mentors, now that the proposal submission period has ended, what do you suggest I do to further increase my chances of getting selected
@Abhiram I saw your proposal and it is nice to see you have proposed the changes that you have found out. How about a small patch to showcase what you have proposed? This will increase your chance too.
Himanshu Sekhar Nayak said:
Abhiram I saw your proposal and it is nice to see you have proposed the changes that you have found out. How about a small patch to showcase what you have proposed? This will increase your chance too.
This. Everyone that applied should be working on some patch, however minor whether related to your project or not. Demonstrate your ability to work with existing code and communicate.
We should be expecting a patch in order to know your ability if you are the right student for the project. So everyone start communicating and show some patch. This increases your chance to get selected and it also help us in proposal ranking.
Hi, I have sent a small patch related to my project, please review it
Abhiram said:
Hi, I have sent a small patch related to my project, please review it
Where?
Himanshu Sekhar Nayak said:
Abhiram said:
Hi, I have sent a small patch related to my project, please review it
Where?
appleseed
Nishanth said:
working on it
@Nishanth, what is the status of your patch?
Still working on it, getting some build errors
Abhiram said:
Himanshu Sekhar Nayak said:
Abhiram said:
Hi, I have sent a small patch related to my project, please review it
Where?
appleseed
You sent patch to appleseed? Idk what does that mean. May be @Sean will able to help here.
Nishanth said:
Still working on it, getting some build errors
Build errors?
@Abhiram can you provide a link just so I know we're talking about the same patch?
As I said earlier regarding the patch doesn't that mean you should submit the whole work of your proposal. Any small changes or anything related to what you understand should be visible to us. This helps us too to rank proposals. So everyone start showing whatever you have progressed so far. Start communicating clearly in order to know where you got stuck.
Sean said:
Abhiram can you provide a link just so I know we're talking about the same patch?
https://github.com/appleseedhq/appleseed/pull/2923
I sent a small pr related to my project, just updated few independent files to the latest methods
Thank you for sharing the link!
Sean said:
Thank you for sharing the link!
Please tell me if this is what you expected or not
I can't find any new python related issues, if there are any please send them over. I'll work on them
https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/pull/74 here is my patch, its not completed yet still got some work to do
@Sean @Himanshu Sekhar Nayak @Daniel Rossberg
I need to spend a bit more time with libgcv to come up with a better solution
New PR link https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/pull/75
Thank you for the link! Glad to see you were able to submit something.
Nishanth said:
New PR link https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/pull/75
From next time create a separate branch instead of primary main that you forked. So that main branch of brlcad will not have a issue with your main branch.
Thank you @sean for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. Super excited, and looking forward to the coming days!
Will further communication take place here itself or through mail?
I would like to work on Web based 3D geometry project, would like to connect with the mentors and get brief about the project.
Prashanth D said:
I would like to work on Web based 3D geometry project, would like to connect with the mentors and get brief about the project.
Hi @Prashanth D, welcome to BRL-CAD.
Which project do you mean? There es e.g. the Online Geometry Viewer (OGV), but we havent selected it as a priority for this year. This does however not mean that we can not accept a proposal for such a project, but you would need to be more independent then.
Yes, OGV fall under continuation of a previous project so you will need to identify someone willing to mentor the effort and/or expect to be a bit more independent in your discovery and execution of a plan. But certainly possible to submit a proposal for it. I'd suggest trying to get OGV up and running, familiarize yourself with it, and share your progress here.
I have previously worked on OGV @Prashanth D if you have some cool ideas on how we can work on improving and adding new features. Let me know if you have set that up already.
Hey @Amanjot Singh it's great to see you! Are you interested in mentoring a project this GSoC?
Hey @Sean great to see you too. Yeah, I am in the mentors list already. I will look into the proposals and mark interested to the ones that I love the most. Additionally, if there will be a project that needs a mentor I would sign up first that as well.
I knew you were on the list, but whether you actively would like to mentor a project or not :)
Great to hear that it sounds like you are willing, which is great
We will need more mentors if we want to accept more than two applicants.
Cool, I would love to help wherever possible. Thanks Sean!
Sean said:
We will need more mentors if we want to accept more than two applicants.
Hey @Sean in case we want to accept more applicants, I am willing to mentor
hi, how can I view the applicant proposal? https://github.com/elalish/manifold/pull/781#issuecomment-2028842146
Or maybe I should ask the applicant to email me the proposal directly?
hmmm never mind I just asked the applicant to send us an email directly
pca006132 said:
hi, how can I view the applicant proposal? https://github.com/elalish/manifold/pull/781#issuecomment-2028842146
Or maybe I should ask the applicant to email me the proposal directly?
You should be able to see it in the summer of code interface -- if not, that means you're not yet registered properly yet. I'll send an e-mail out to confirm all the mentors are in there.
We really discourage direct e-mails for a variety of reasons (they must be ranked on the one they submitted to google, for example, in case significant changes were made after the deadline) but sounds like there's a problem to fix.
I sent an invite to pca006132 after I saw his message. He wasn't a mentor at this time. Now, he is.
Thanks Daniel! I'll make sure he's on the gsocax list too.
Hi @Kavisha Khanna, did you installed BRL-CAD? You can find the necessary installation packages at https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/releases. This will install over 200 programs. Most of them are small command line tools. The most interesting are our old but still heavily used GUI mged and the more modern GUI archer. Go through the mged tutorial https://brlcad.org/w/images/c/cf/Introduction_to_MGED.pdf.
Gain an overview of the existing documentation at https://brlcad.org/wiki/Main_Page.
To start programming, download the source code from https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad, compile, and install the programs (https://brlcad.org/wiki/Compiling).
@Daniel Rossberg thankyou so much for the details, haven't installed it yet, but will do the needful and start working on them.
Hi @Kavisha Khanna, I would suggest you install BRL-CAD (build from scratch https://brlcad.org/wiki/Compiling) try using some majour programs as @Daniel Rossberg said. That way, you will be able to understand what project you want to continue on.
Hello Everyone !!
I am Simarjot Singh I am pursuing B.Tech in CSE and currently in I am in 2nd year.I have experience in front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React (with JavaScript and TypeScript), Git, and GitHub, as well as some familiarity with Next.js and React Native . I am eager to contribute to open-source projects and am particularly interested in participating in GSoC 2025.I came across BRL-CAD and am excited about contributing to this organization. Could anyone guide me on how to start?
Hello @Simarjot Singh , welcome to BRLCAD. You can start by installing BRLCAD on your local system (https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/releases) This will install over 200 programs. The most interesting one are MGED and Archer. You can also go through the MGED tutorial - https://brlcad.org/w/images/c/cf/Introduction_to_MGED.pdf
Also, you can go through our documentation here - https://brlcad.org/wiki/Main_Page
To start programming, download the source code from https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad, compile, and install the programs (https://brlcad.org/wiki/Compiling).
Thank alot @Vidit Jain for your help I will be starting this from today onwards it self
Hello everyone, I am Ravish. I am currently studying at Polaris School of Technology, where I am in my first year. I have knowledge of Python and few of its libraries, Java, JavaScript, Html , Css, C++ as well as MERN Stack basics. Rest skills I am definitely sure, I will learn while doing it very rapidly. I am eager to contribute to the organization . As Open source provides an excellent opportunity to learn a lot by working on various tasks together so I am very excited and eagerly want to work and ready to give my 100%.
So, will you please help me in the journey of open source and contributing to the org? like:- I want to work on the project then which type of project is coming?
I have explored the options and found a keen interest in contributing to the organization. I will be great full to you. ##
Gsoc 2025.
Hello @Ravish,
The first thing you should do is learning about BRL-CAD, what it is and how it works. I.e.
Install the main programs. You can find installation binaries for Windows among the releases https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/releases. If you don't want to start with Windows, you have to compile the programs by yourself first. For doing this, see next section.
The installation contains a huge amount of programs. Most of them are small command line tools. You should look at our old but still heavily used GUI mged and the more modern GUI archer.
With both, you can go through the tutorial https://brlcad.org/w/images/c/cf/Introduction_to_MGED.pdf.
The next step would be compiling the programs from sources. This is, of course, necessary for contributing to the programs in our main repository. But, even if you are interested in web-programming, like our Online Geometry Viewer or writing a Python API (where you need an installed BRL-CAD only), without being able to compile it by yourself, you cannot benefit from latest improvements. Therefore
Links with ideas for small contributions:
Last, some remarks regarding GSoC:
@Daniel Rossberg Thank you, sir, for your support and incredible guidance. It truly helps me in this journey. I will definitely follow these steps to get started. Thanks so much for supporting.
But, don't be disappointed if BRL-CAD doesn't participate in GSoC 2025. I'm really unsure regarding this. It's so quiet here. However, following above guidance will teach you skills, which are of general benefit in tech industry.
The compilation of the external dependencies (https://github.com/BRL-CAD/bext) is known to be bumpy. I'll try it by myself...
@Daniel Rossberg Thank you for your support. It means a lot. I understand that there's uncertainty about BRL-CAD's participation in GSoC 2025, and I won't be discouraged. I'll focus on following the guidance provided, as the skills I learn will be valuable in the tech industry regardless.
Thanks again for your guidance and encouragement. I'll always try to being my best.
Last updated: Jan 09 2025 at 00:46 UTC