Participating in Outreachy's December 2026 cohort

Participating in Outreachy's December 2026 cohort

[Christian Couder]

Hi everyone,

Open Source communities have until September 11, 2026, at 4 pm UTC to
sign up to participate as mentoring organizations in Outreachy's
December 2026 cohort (see
https://www.outreachy.org/blog/2026-02-06/may-2026-call-for-mentoring-organizations/).
And (co)mentors have until that same time to submit project
descriptions.

Last year the Git community mentored a single intern. For a long time
GitHub or GitLab used to sponsor Outreachy interns working on Git, but
last year both declined to do it, so the intern was sponsored by the
Git project itself.

Let us know if you want to help as a (co)mentor or an Org Admin, if
you know a company that would sponsor an intern, if you have ideas for
projects that we could propose, or if you have an opinion on Git
participating again this year, or on how we should select interns,
etc.

I am likely to mentor and help as an Org Admin again this year unless
we decide not to participate.

Thanks.

Re: Participating in Outreachy's December 2026 cohort

[Usman Akinyemi]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2026 at 4:29 PM Christian Couder
<christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
Hello
>
> Open Source communities have until September 11, 2026, at 4 pm UTC to
> sign up to participate as mentoring organizations in Outreachy's
> December 2026 cohort (see
> https://www.outreachy.org/blog/2026-02-06/may-2026-call-for-mentoring-organizations/).
> And (co)mentors have until that same time to submit project
> descriptions.
I was already waiting for this.
>
> Last year the Git community mentored a single intern. For a long time
And to add to this, the intern later went on to co-mentor a GSOC
intern this year.
And also will be presenting his project in the coming Git conference.
I was also a previous
Outreachy intern myself. Because of this, I believe the program is
very much valuable to the community.
> GitHub or GitLab used to sponsor Outreachy interns working on Git, but
> last year both declined to do it, so the intern was sponsored by the
> Git project itself.
>
> Let us know if you want to help as a (co)mentor or an Org Admin, if
> you know a company that would sponsor an intern, if you have ideas for
> projects that we could propose, or if you have an opinion on Git
> participating again this year, or on how we should select interns,
> etc.
I will like to be a co-mentor again this year.
>
> I am likely to mentor and help as an Org Admin again this year unless
> we decide not to participate.
>
> Thanks.
Thanks.
>

Re: Participating in Outreachy's December 2026 cohort

[Kaartic Sivaraam]

Hi Christian,

On 8/26/26 16:25, Christian Couder wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Open Source communities have until September 11, 2026, at 4 pm UTC to
> sign up to participate as mentoring organizations in Outreachy's
> December 2026 cohort (see
> https://www.outreachy.org/blog/2026-02-06/may-2026-call-for-mentoring-organizations/).
> And (co)mentors have until that same time to submit project
> descriptions.
> 
> Last year the Git community mentored a single intern. For a long time
> GitHub or GitLab used to sponsor Outreachy interns working on Git, but
> last year both declined to do it, so the intern was sponsored by the
> Git project itself.
> 
> Let us know if you want to help as a (co)mentor or an Org Admin, if
> you know a company that would sponsor an intern, if you have ideas for
> projects that we could propose, or if you have an opinion on Git
> participating again this year, or on how we should select interns,
> etc.
> 

I too believe it would be great if Git could participate in Outreachy 
this year.

I would be willing to co-mentor a project this year. I could also help
as an org admin if needed.

Also, Pablo was interested to volunteer as a co-mentor for Outreachy. 
I've added him in Cc.

--
Sivaraam

Re: Participating in Outreachy's December 2026 cohort

[Pablo Sabater]

On Wed Sep 2, 2026 at 2:20 PM WEST, Kaartic Sivaraam wrote:
> Hi Christian,
>
> On 8/26/26 16:25, Christian Couder wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> Open Source communities have until September 11, 2026, at 4 pm UTC to
>> sign up to participate as mentoring organizations in Outreachy's
>> December 2026 cohort (see
>> https://www.outreachy.org/blog/2026-02-06/may-2026-call-for-mentoring-organizations/).
>> And (co)mentors have until that same time to submit project
>> descriptions.
>> 
>> Last year the Git community mentored a single intern. For a long time
>> GitHub or GitLab used to sponsor Outreachy interns working on Git, but
>> last year both declined to do it, so the intern was sponsored by the
>> Git project itself.
>> 
>> Let us know if you want to help as a (co)mentor or an Org Admin, if
>> you know a company that would sponsor an intern, if you have ideas for
>> projects that we could propose, or if you have an opinion on Git
>> participating again this year, or on how we should select interns,
>> etc.
>> 
>
> I too believe it would be great if Git could participate in Outreachy 
> this year.
>
> I would be willing to co-mentor a project this year. I could also help
> as an org admin if needed.
>
> Also, Pablo was interested to volunteer as a co-mentor for Outreachy. 
> I've added him in Cc.
>
> --
> Sivaraam

Hello,

Yes, I'd also like to volunteer as a co-mentor for Outreachy this year.

Although I won't have as much time available as I did during the summer,
now that the university semester has started, I believe I can still make
enough time to review and mentor.

I do have exams in October and January, but they shouldn't make me 
unavailable for a whole week, so I don't expect them to be a problem.

Regards,
Pablo

Re: Participating in Outreachy's December 2026 cohort

[Christian Couder]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2026 at 12:55 PM Christian Couder
<christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:

> Open Source communities have until September 11, 2026, at 4 pm UTC to
> sign up to participate as mentoring organizations in Outreachy's
> December 2026 cohort (see
> https://www.outreachy.org/blog/2026-02-06/may-2026-call-for-mentoring-organizations/).
> And (co)mentors have until that same time to submit project
> descriptions.

Thank you Usman, Kaartic and Pablo for volunteering to co-mentor!

As no one objected to Git participating in Outreachy, I will submit a
Community Application for Git very soon.

We will still have to sign up as mentors and find and submit projects
for interns to work on soon. We have until September 11, 2026, at 4 pm
UTC, which is less than one week from now.

I have been thinking about the following projects:

1. Continue removing global state (and perhaps start libifying some
parts of the code base).

I think Tian Yuchen said there is not much work left related to
"environment.{c,h}". So maybe we need to adjust the project compared
to its previous description or maybe make it about actually libifying
some parts of the code base.

2. Improve how command arguments and options are scanned and parsed.

There are still a number of places in the code base where command
arguments are scanned or parsed using ad hoc hand-rolled code instead
of an existing API like the parse-options API or the early-scan API I
recently proposed in
https://lore.kernel.org/git/20260902161047.476753-1-christian.couder@gmail.com/.
Those pieces of ad hoc parsing or scanning code are often buggy and
difficult to maintain. I think porting them to an API while improving
that API if necessary can be an interesting project and bring a lot of
long term benefits to the project. As the parse-options API is already
quite feature-full, there are likely some areas where porting the
parsing code to it should be relatively easy which is newcomer
friendly.

Let me know your opinion about these and if you have other project ideas.

> Last year the Git community mentored a single intern. For a long time
> GitHub or GitLab used to sponsor Outreachy interns working on Git, but
> last year both declined to do it, so the intern was sponsored by the
> Git project itself.

I will start poking people at GitLab about this, but it would be nice
if we could get some kind of help with this regarding other companies
too.

Thanks,
Christian.

Re: Participating in Outreachy's December 2026 cohort

[Christian Couder]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2026 at 10:26 AM Christian Couder
<christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Usman, Kaartic and Pablo for volunteering to co-mentor!
>
> As no one objected to Git participating in Outreachy, I will submit a
> Community Application for Git very soon.

I have submitted a Community Application for Git, see:

https://www.outreachy.org/communities/cfp/git/

It says that we are willing to mentor and sponsor 2 interns. Hopefully
we can have two (co-)mentors for each intern.

> We will still have to sign up as mentors and find and submit projects
> for interns to work on soon. We have until September 11, 2026, at 4 pm
> UTC, which is less than one week from now.
>
> I have been thinking about the following projects:
>
> 1. Continue removing global state (and perhaps start libifying some
> parts of the code base).
>
> I think Tian Yuchen said there is not much work left related to
> "environment.{c,h}". So maybe we need to adjust the project compared
> to its previous description or maybe make it about actually libifying
> some parts of the code base.
>
> 2. Improve how command arguments and options are scanned and parsed.
>
> There are still a number of places in the code base where command
> arguments are scanned or parsed using ad hoc hand-rolled code instead
> of an existing API like the parse-options API or the early-scan API I
> recently proposed in
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/20260902161047.476753-1-christian.couder@gmail.com/.
> Those pieces of ad hoc parsing or scanning code are often buggy and
> difficult to maintain. I think porting them to an API while improving
> that API if necessary can be an interesting project and bring a lot of
> long term benefits to the project. As the parse-options API is already
> quite feature-full, there are likely some areas where porting the
> parsing code to it should be relatively easy which is newcomer
> friendly.
>
> Let me know your opinion about these and if you have other project ideas.

As no other project ideas were suggested, I submitted the project
ideas I mentioned above. You can see them in the "Approved Projects
for Git" section of the above mentioned page
(https://www.outreachy.org/communities/cfp/git/) as:

- Improve how command arguments and options are scanned and parsed
(https://www.outreachy.org/outreachy-dec-2026-internship-cohort/communities/git/#improve-how-command-arguments-and-options-are-scan)
- Reduce Git’s global state to enable Git's libification
(https://www.outreachy.org/outreachy-dec-2026-internship-cohort/communities/git/#reduce-gits-global-state-to-enable-gits-libificati)

The links to these projects are currently only available to approved
mentors and coordinators. I applied to mentor both of these projects
as this was required to submit the projects, but I am very much
willing to remove myself from mentoring one of these projects.

So please apply to (co-)mentor one of these projects, or submit other
projects you are willing to mentor if you prefer.

Also let me know if you see things that could be improved in these
projects or the Community Application for Git.

> > Last year the Git community mentored a single intern. For a long time
> > GitHub or GitLab used to sponsor Outreachy interns working on Git, but
> > last year both declined to do it, so the intern was sponsored by the
> > Git project itself.
>
> I will start poking people at GitLab about this, but it would be nice
> if we could get some kind of help with this regarding other companies
> too.

I have mentioned GitLab, GitHub and OpenAI as organizations that could
potentially sponsor Outreachy interns. I have also proposed an
"Outreachy sponsoring" topic to be discussed at the Git Contributor's
Summit 2026 next week.

Thanks.