Hello,
I am not aware of what information regarding this project has been exchanged between my mentor Daniel Black and others including serg, so I am sharing this here for everyone to see. My last mail contains the conversations I had with my mentors.
Some quotes from the final evaluation -
"Your questions in the last week have been exceptionally keen even though these seem to be the same questions from 1-2 months ago"
Remind me when you (Daniel Black) answered them.
"Sumit, overall we are happy with the quality of work. Unfortunately the quantity of work showed a lack of putting in hours and limited test cases fell short of the project plan and organisational expectations"
What limited test cases ? I wrote all the test cases you (Daniel Black) and JAN Lindstrom asked me to write. Which test case did I miss ? I even ran a bench-marking test with all possible values and sent you the results. However, testing the actual performance difference is something that can only be done in a real NUMA Machine. Sorry, I don't have that. And have you ever even tested my code in a real NUMA Machine ? I too deserve to know if my work has made any real difference on the machine it is supposed to work on. And I have asked you to run it on a real machine more than once over the past months.
You are happy with the quality of the work. Good. You are unhappy with the quantity. How do you expect me to increase the quantity when I already completed the tasks I promised in my GSoC proposal except for those that you removed from the list. What project plan are you referring to ?
The tasks can be categorised as follows.
[1] The tasks mentioned in my GSoC proposal which were not removed / changed later. - I completed all these.
[2] The tasks mentioned in my GSoC proposal which were crossed out / (under consideration to be dropped / unnecessary) / or were implemented differently. - I either did not complete these for obvious reasons or implemented some of them differently.
[3] The tasks you added (in the last month) to the spreadsheet originally under the title 'Out of Time' in the last month. - I completed some of these too.
Then when these were done you moved a task (the queue per node task) from the 'Out of Time' to the third month group. We both agreed it was an important part for the completion of the project and I tried my best to implement it. I spent days trying to figure it out, asked you for help, didn't get any, tried again and yet failed because I am no expert of either InnoDB or SQl side of MariaDB.
Which organisational expectations did you ask me to fulfil ? When ?
I don't remember ever being told about any organisational expectations. Perhaps these were your personal expectations of having a complete NUMA Support in MariaDB by the end of GSoC. If so, then I am really sorry I wasn't able to fulfill those expectations because I got stuck at an important part of the project which also was a seemingly impossible task to do and YOU FAILED TO HELP ME with it even though I repeatedly asked (begged actually) you for help. You just kept reminding me that to do the task was my job.
That's some real good mentoring right there.
Another quote from the final evaluation
"Passing to get your continued work isn't honoring the rules of the project or being fair to Google"
Yeah, How about showing some good mentor ship by helping me to complete the project while we had the time to do it within Google's timelines in stead. Oh! wait a sec... you never went through the code.. until 3-4 days ago. I was determined to complete it if you had helped me. I have been mentioning it in all mails since the mail I wrote to you and Jan on :
22nd Aug - "Last but not least, if you think it can still be done and have a idea, I will be more than willing to attempt it. After all, GSoC has only got me started to contribute to open-source and this evaluation won't be the end of it."
25th Aug - "I am sorry I am unable to create an implementation. It's not like I don't want to. I just can't completely understand how it has been implemented currently. I have tried to follow the code before, and I did again the whole day today, but I can't come up with an idea at all."
25th Aug - "Like I said, I am not unwilling to complete this task. But I can't even think of where to start. Since, the two of you have greater experience with InnoDB, maybe you should give it a shot. You will definitely understand the present structure better than I do. And if you can come up with even a verbal solution that sounds like it could work, I will implement it asap."
25th Aug - "I spent all day trying to think of any way to implement a queue-per-node thing, and I confess I failed to come up with one. So, in stead of spending more time on that, I will work on migrating these commits to a new branch today. And I also urge you to give this task a try yourselves."
25th Aug - " I haven't been able to implement the queue per node structure for background threads, and I am afraid I won't be able to do it without your help. It is beyond me. I gave it a few attempts and I have failed. It's not the implementation part but the 'coming up with a way to implement it' part that I haven't been able to figure out yet. I need you to know that I am trying my best here."
25th Aug - "But anyway I kindly request you two to try it out yourselves now. You don't have to do the work. I just urge you to take some time out this weekend and go through the code. Let me know how you think it may be possible to implement it. I will do it. I have 4 days 2 hrs before the deadline to submit the evaluation, ends. If you can come up with an implementation plan within the next 2 or 2.5 days, I assure you I will code the implementation within a day of that and probably commit it before submitting the final evaluation as well. I am willing to take this risk."
On Aug 28th you wrote a mail and asked me "Knowing what plans you had and how they failed would have been good to know." So, on the same day I wrote you a mail with a detailed explanation of the attempts I had made in trying to complete the task, asking you again to try it yourself and help me if you could come up with an idea. You never did.
Me - "did you have an attempt at the task ? come up with any ideas yet ?"
dragonheart - been a bit busy with my own work so far. I know I'm going to have to look at a lot of stuff to finish the final GSoC evaluation
Me - "You must have seen my mails. Did you have an attempt at the queue per node thing ? Any ideas ?"
dragonheart - well, implementing it was your task. but no, haven't found the hours to look though the code again.
As per our conversation on IRC clearly Daniel Black hadn't even gone through the code by 4th Sept or attempted to solve the problem. How did he hope to complete the final evaluation. Even if he went through the code a day before submitting his evaluation, isn't this too late for a mentor to go through his/her student's code.
Here is a list of some questions I would like MariaDB staff to ponder upon especially serg.
[1] Was the task doable at all ?
[A] Not unless you are an expert of both the SQL side and the InnoDB side, expert enough to re-write a major part of the interfaace between them. Jan himself acknowledged he wouldn't be able to help me with this, because he has no experience with the interface. I really appreciate that.
[2] Even if the task was doable by a team of SQL and InnoDB experts, was it doable by an individual student working on MariaDB for the past four months ?
[A] Nope.
[3] Why didn't Daniel Black help me with the task even when I clearly mentioned I would need help with the task weeks ago ?
[A] ???
[4] Did my mentor Daniel Black even try to help me with this particular task ? Ever ?
[A] Nope.
[5] Did Daniel Black evaluate me on the basis of the number of commits or the tasks accomplished by those commits ?
[A] Based on the evaluation, he clearly has been unhappy with the decreased number of commits, not the content, as all the tasks mentioned in the original proposal have been achieved along with a few more.
[6] Can Daniel Black himself complete this task, and thus the project ?
[A] I bet not.
No doubt the project is incomplete because it involves doing a task that is nearly impossible to do, at least for me, especially without any help. But does GSoC means that the student has to necessarily complete the entire project. I have gone through the code submitting guidelines plenty of times. It clearly states that we must state which tasks were done, and which tasks remain. Obviously not all projects are complete, some only complete the project partially, but mention everything and continue working on them. I did the same, and mentioned in my evaluation that almost all tasks were complete, in stead of all, and I have always been willing to complete this project but man, I can't do something impossible, especially when the people I am supposed to ask for help themselves fail to help their students.
Thanks,
Sumit