For those curious about getting involved with Rust, note that right now is an ideal time. :) This last quarter of the year is reserved for "the impl period", a collection of all-out heads-down sprints designed to make sure that none of the remaining milestones from our 2017 roadmap get left behind. There are currently 37 working groups in a variety of disciplines, some more involved than others and some more popular than others, but mentorship is offered to all who'd like to contribute!
Note that this page appears to be displaying open issues, but doesn't specify if someone is actively working on an issue, so it might take a few tries to find one that's up for grabs.
I would like to port it (or parts of it) to Rust, for fun and speed. Since the grammars are EBNF, it means the same grammars can work in both Rust and Python (I already support some interoperability with Javascript).
However, I'm very new to Rust, and its type system and memory management mechanics seem a bit intimidating. Do you think anyone would be interested in mentoring me or even in actively helping me to port it? And if so, where/who should I ask? Thanks
I've been contributing to the compiler for years and have never really touched any of the LLVM stuff. Compilers are large, there's a lot of stuff to do, and plenty of it is not-complicated stuff that doesn't take effort to learn. Many (most?) of our contributors start off with zero compiler experience.
And even in the compiler itself there's plenty of work to be done that doesn't even come close to the LLVM and that have mentoring instructions[1]. The point of entry that I personally found successful when starting to contribute was modifying and expanding the compiler's diagnostic output[2], as it gives you something to grep for and work it out from there.
Also, be aware that beyond just asking questions in the issue tracker and on the official #rust IRC channel, each Working Group has a room on gitter[3] where there are people more than eager to help any newcomers.
My advice would be to look out for anything that you might find interesting, ask for help whenever you get stuck and just read the code. There's plenty of opportunities to make an impact[4] :)
Maybe I should have added "... but would like to learn a thing or two, without having to do follow a whole CompSci education specialising in the subject first"
See our most recent newsletter for the impl period here: https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/the-impl-period-newsletter...