SAOC 2026: seeking a mentor for dub build caching

[Hariprakash]

Hi all,

I'm putting together a Symmetry Autumn of Code 2026 proposal and 
looking for a mentor.

The project is content-hash based build caching for dub, 
replacing the current timestamp-based invalidation, which has 
real problems with clock skew, Docker builds, and filesystem 
timestamp precision. There's a stalled 2021 proof of concept (PR 
#2077) that got most of the way there but never landed. I'm 
picking that up, resolving the open design question it left 
around dub.selections.json in the cache key, and shipping it with 
proper test coverage. As a secondary goal, I'll extend this 
year's newly merged Ninja generator backend to auto-select itself 
for large multi-package builds.

Some context on me: I'm a 2026 GSoC contributor with the D 
Language Foundation, where I built the Ninja backend for dub this 
summer (merged PRs #3124, #3130, #3131, #3143), so I'm already 
familiar with the relevant parts of the codebase.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in mentoring, 
or if you know someone who might be, I'd really appreciate 
hearing from you. Happy to share the full proposal.

Thanks,
Hariprakash