#+OPTIONS: toc:nil num:nil
* Name
Abhishek Prasad
* Email
comproprasad@gmail.com
* Name of the project
GNU Clisp
* Summary
Implementing thread safe hash tables in the core of GNU Clisp.
* Benefits
The community:
Having threading support is necessary everywhere from normal computing tasks to
larger applications running on production environments like servers. The problem
arises when the data being used in threads are not atomic in nature. Most of
data structures are thread safe in GNU Clisp except the hash tables which are
also extensively used in [[https://sourceforge.net/p/clocc/hg/ci/default/tree/][CLOCC]].

Me:
Since I am doing this project I will get to know how threads, mutexes and hash
tables are used in writing a program like GNU Clisp. And overall I would be
communicating with great people in the community I would learn other side stuff
too which will be an additional gift for me.
* Things to be delivered
Since, my work consists of threading and hash table support so the files to be
dealt with are =src/zthread.d=, =src/xthread.d= and =src/hashtabl.d= and may be
other lisp files.

Preventing segfaults in MT builds while improving the hash table support. If
possible reimplementation of hash table will be done using Leapfrog probing
method.
* Plan
| Date             | Work                                                                                                                            |
|------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 23-Apr to 13-May | Semester exams                                                                                                                  |
| 04-May to 30-May | Talking with the developers, fixing small bugs and get acquainted with the project                                       |
| 31-May to 11-Jun | Writing the lisp code to make simple threads and find out where the hash table hits a corner case. Get ready with enough tests. |
| 09-Jun to 30-Jun | Write/Improve functions to handle the thread safety in the hash tables.                                                         |
| 25-Jun to 15-Jul | Have the functions run against the test cases                                                                                   |
| 10-Jul to 18-Jul | Write the tests that were missed beforehand                                                                                     |
| 16-Jul to 22-Jul | Make the code more portable to run on different platforms                                                                       |
| 20-Jul to 26-Jul | Polishing the code to be more readable for future development                                                                   |
If possible hash table will be implemented from scratch to have better
performance and MT support.
* Communication
[[https://sourceforge.net/p/clisp/mailman/clisp-devel/][clisp-devel]] mailing list archives on source forge is subscribed both via email
and RSS feeds. [[https://sourceforge.net/p/clisp/mailman/clisp-announce/][clisp-announce]] is the place where announcements are made.
User bugs are available on [[https://sourceforge.net/p/clisp/mailman/clisp-list/][clisp-list]].

I have also asked some questions to the GNU Clisp developers who have helped me
most of the time but I am loving the new things that I learn when I communicate.
* Qualification
I have written a mathematical expression calculator, convex hull problem, AVL
trees and simple matrix operations. So, I am well acquainted with programming in
C/C++ using Makefiles. I also like designing/programming core stuff like a
compiler or a kernel or a DBMS.

Since, I am an Emacs user for around a year so I have started to like ELisp and
gradually lisp too.

+ National Institute of Technology, Durgapur
+ Bachelor's course in Information Technology
+ Second(2nd year or 4th semester) year
+ Multi threading concept is in 4th semester
+ Hash Tables were taught in the 3rd semester
+ Basics of =pthread.h=