Symmetry Autumn of Code 2026 Begins

[Mike Parker]

Two weeks ago, the SAOC 2026 judges sorted through 14 project 
proposals from 12 applicants.

We only provided one project idea this year and encouraged 
applicants to submit their own ideas. This resulted in the 
largest variety of project proposals we've ever seen. Only two 
applicants submitted the suggested project, and each of them 
submitted a backup project as recommended.

As usual, we have funding for only three slots. There were 
several good proposals didn't make it to the top of the combined 
rankings. These are the three that did, listed alphabetically by 
author name:

__ImportC: Zero-Wrapper Integration for Production Grade C 
Libraries__

Niyati Jain is working on this, with Nicholas Wilson as mentor. A 
number of ImportC bugs were squashed in SAOC 2025 by Emmanuel 
Nyarko. This project aims to build on that by targeting specific 
compilation failures in a set of widely-used C libraries and 
providing wrapper-free dub packages for those libraries. This 
involves fixing issues involving system headers, function-like 
macros, bitfields, and more.

__Improving DMD's CTFE Performance__

This one comes from Abul Khan, with Dennis Korpel as mentor. This 
project has two primary goals. The first is to make CTFE a 
replaceable component behind an interface. The second is to test 
it by taking a prototype modification Dennis implemented some 
time ago that improved memory usage and putting it behind the 
interface. This is not a full CTFE rewrite, but sets the stage 
for testing different engines later.

__MLIR Support for LDC__

Asadbek Sindarov porposed this, with Nicholas Wilson as mentor. 
LDC has unused stubs for Multi-Level Intermediate Representation 
(MLIR). This project will establish a functional, end-to-end MLIR 
backend for LDC. This will allow the utilization of advanced 
optimizations for D code and provide possibilities to leverage ML 
compiler framework optimizations.

Congratulations to Niyati, Abul, and Asadbek, and good luck with 
the event.

Thanks to everyone who submitted an application. I can tell you 
now that next year we will again skip a list of project ideas. If 
you think you might want to submit, I encourage you to start 
looking now for gaps you may be able to fill.

Thanks to Dennis and Nicholas for agreeing to take on the mentor 
role once again, and to Atila Neves, Robert Schadek, and Jonathan 
M. Davis for serving as our judges.

And a big thanks to Symmetry Investments for continuing to 
support this event every year. This is the 9th edition of SAOC 
already. Where does the time go?

Milestone 1 kicked off today. Keep an eye out for weekly reports 
in the General forum starting next week.