GSoC 2015 proposal
diff --git a/gsoc_2015.html b/gsoc_2015.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73a5fba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/gsoc_2015.html
@@ -0,0 +1,222 @@
+<html>
+<head>
+<link rel=stylesheet type="text/css" href="style.css" title="style">
+<title>
+man-pages proposal for Google Summer of Code 2015
+</title>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+
+<!--BEGIN-LINKS-->
+<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search">
+<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td align="left">
+<font size="-1">
+
+Linux <em>man-pages</em>: &nbsp;
+<a href="./index.html">home</a> | 
+<a href="./contributing.html">contributing</a> | 
+<a href="./reporting_bugs.html">bugs</a> | 
+<a href="./patches.html">patches</a> | 
+<a href="./download.html">download</a> &nbsp; || &nbsp; 
+<a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/index.html">online pages</a></font>
+</td>
+<td align="right">
+<input type="text" name="q" size=10 maxlength=255 value="">
+<input type="hidden" name="sitesearch" value="man7.org/linux/man-pages">
+<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search online pages">
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</form>
+<!--END-LINKS-->
+
+
+<h1><em>man-pages</em> proposal for Google Summer of Code 2015</h1>
+
+<h2>The man-pages project</h2>
+<p>
+    The Linux
+    <em>man-pages</em> project
+    documents the
+    <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux</a>
+    <a href="http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel">kernel</a>
+    and C library interfaces that are employed by user-space programs.
+    With respect to the C library, the primary focus is the
+    <a href="http://www.gnu.org">GNU</a> C library
+    (<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/">glibc</a>),
+    although, where known,
+    documentation of variations in other C libraries
+    available for Linux is also included.
+    Established in 1993, the project by now contains nearly
+    1000 man pages that provide documentation of Linux system calls
+    (and other Linux kernel-user-space APIs, such as the
+    <span class="pathname">/proc</span>
+    filesystem), C library APIs, and various related topics.
+    The project is
+    <a href="maintaining.html">maintained</a>
+    by
+    <a href="http://man7.org/mtk/index.html">Michael Kerrisk</a>
+    and typically 10 to 20 volunteers make contributions to the
+    <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/changelog.html">releases</a>
+    that occur approxmately monthly.
+</p>
+
+<h2>Problem background</h2>
+
+<p>
+    The GNU C library employs a range of
+    <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/feature_test_macros.7.html">feature test macros</a>
+    (FTMs)
+    that are used by applications at compile time to control
+    the definitions and declarations exposed by the library header files.
+    Examples of FTMs include
+    <span class="const">_GNU_SOURCE</span>,
+    <span class="const">_POSIX_C_SOURCE</span>,
+    and
+    <span class="const">_XOPEN_SOURCE</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Starting several years ago, the
+    <em>man-pages</em> project
+    began documenting the FTMs that must be defined in order
+    to obtain the declaration of each system call and library function
+    exposed via glibc headers.
+    That documentation includes changes in FTM requirements across
+    glibc versions and is by now reasonably complete,
+    albeit not completely up to date
+    (and hence the rationale for this proposal).
+    Some (more complex)
+    examples of the FTM documentation can be seen in the SYNOPSIS
+    at the top of various man pages such as
+    <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/stat.2.html">stat(2)</a>,
+    <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/fsync.2.html">fsync(2)</a>,
+    <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/fsync.2.html">unshare(2)</a>,
+    <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/getgrnam.3.html">getgrnam(3)</a>,
+    and
+    <a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/isfdtype.3.html">isfdtype(3)</a>.
+
+</p>
+
+<p>
+    The work to add this documentation to the man pages has been done
+    largely by hand, by visually inspecting the various header files
+    and checking against the FTM logic implemented in the
+    <span class="pathname"><a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/getgrnam.3.html">&lt;features.h&gt;</a></span>
+    header file.
+    However, this approach is time-consuming and somewhat error-prone.
+    It is also
+    subject to bit rot as the glibc FTM requirements evolve
+    across releases.
+    In particular, starting with version 2.19 deprecated
+    two long-standing but no longer useful FTMs,
+    <span class="const">_BSD_SOURCE</span>
+    and
+    <span class="const">_SVID_SOURCE</span>,
+    and replaced them with a single
+    FTM,
+    <span class="const">_DEFAULT_SOURCE</span>.
+    The
+    <em>man-pages</em> project
+    has largely caught up with this change, which requires updates
+    to around 150 pages.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An automated solution that provided up-to-date information on the
+    FTM requirements of the functions exposed by glibc,
+    generated by a tool that parsed the header files,
+    would be very helpful.
+</p>
+
+<h2>The problem to solve</h2>
+
+<p>
+    The goal of this project is to construct a parser for glibc
+    header files that can be used to answer the question:
+    "Which feature test macro definitions cause the definition of function
+    <span class="func">foo()</span> to be exposed by the glibc header files?".
+    (Note that, as shown in many of the pages linked to above,
+    it is often the case that any of multiple different FTMs can be defined
+    in order to obtain the declaration of a function from the header files,
+    and the parser should produce the set
+    of all of the possible combinations.)
+    The parser would take account of the C preprocessor conditionals
+    (<span class="code">#if</span>,
+    <span class="code">#ifdef</span>)
+    in the C header files that employ FTM-related macros
+    in order to generate the desired information.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The parser should work across multiple versions 
+    of glibc and will thus probably need to encode
+    (perhaps via a table-driven approach)
+    some of the version-specific logic contained in
+    <span class="pathname"><a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/getgrnam.3.html">&lt;features.h&gt;</a></span>,
+    which has steadily evolved with various versions of glibc.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Input for the parser would include:
+</p>
+    <ul>
+        <li>
+	    the glibc header files;
+        </li>
+        <li>
+	    (probably) the glibc version number (since the range of FTMs
+            and the FTM logic encoded in 
+	    <span class="pathname"><a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/getgrnam.3.html">&lt;features.h&gt;</a></span>
+	    have changed across glibc versions); and
+        </li>
+        <li>
+	    a list of names of functions for which FTM requirements are
+	    to be generated.
+        </li>
+    </ul>
+<p>
+    The parser should output information in a format
+    that can be easily incorporated into the man pages
+    (but the step of actually updating the man pages is <em>not</em>
+    something that is intended to be automated).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+    Inasmuch as a scripting language will probably be useful
+    to write the parser, Python is the preferred choice.
+    That choice is based on the fact that the tool will need to be maintained
+    and modified as glibc evolves and some existing scripting
+    tools used by the
+    <em>man-pages</em> project
+    also employ Python.
+    Nevertheless, the choice of another scripting language
+    might be entertained if there is a good technical justification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+    
+</p>
+
+<!--BEGIN-STATCOUNTER-->
+<!-- SITETRACKING.linux_man-pages -->
+<!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
+<script type="text/javascript">
+var sc_project=5618989;
+var sc_invisible=1;
+var sc_partition=60;
+var sc_click_stat=1;
+var sc_security="4f8507d7";
+</script>
+
+<script type="text/javascript"
+src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><div
+class="statcounter"><a title="customisable counter"
+href="http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html"
+target="_blank"><img class="statcounter"
+src="http://c.statcounter.com/5618989/0/4f8507d7/1/" alt="customisable
+counter" ></a></div></noscript>
+<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->
+<!--END-STATCOUNTER-->
+</body>
+</html>
+