Symmetry Autumn of Code 2026 Begins

[Hariprakash]

On Tuesday, 15 September 2026 at 14:55:03 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> 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.

Congrats to Niyati, Abul, and Asadbek, all three of these sound 
like genuinely great projects. I submitted a proposal this year 
too (content-hash based build caching for dub) and while it 
didn't make the cut, I'm looking forward to following the 
progress here, especially the CTFE work, that's an area I've been 
circling around myself lately through some dub/DMD contributions. 
Good luck to all three of you this term.