Me: Alan Haggai Alavi

E-mail Address: alanhaggai@gmail.com

Google ID: alanhaggai

Project Title: Bug-fixing of the Archive::Zip CPAN module

Abstract: There are lots of utilities available that allow one to zip
and unzip files. However, Perl programs are often required to either
create, manipulate, read or write .zip files. Archive::Zip is a CPAN
module that allows a program to manage Zip archive files without calling
an external utility.

The Archive::Zip module, however, has some bugs which prevent it from
generating fully-portable .zip files, that are handled correctly by all
.zip files readers and manipulators. The project aims to fix such bugs
as they were reported, by adapting pyconstruct to parse and analyze .zip
files.

Benefits to the Perl/Open Source Community: The Perl/Open Source
community will have better ability to manipulate .zip files using Perl,
and to analyse them using pyconstruct.

Deliverables: An optimised version of Archive::Zip and a re-usable .zip
file deconstructor.

Project Details: Archive::Zip is a perl module that allows a program to
create, manipulate, read and write Zip archive files without calling an
external utility. This programatical approach is more robust than other
approaches of calling external utilities, as their output is not easily
parsable.

The aim of the project is to fix the existing Archive::Zip module.  In
order to achieve this, we will dissect the .zip files that have been
produced by Archive::Zip as well as other .zip utilities.  pyconstruct
will be used for the dissection. pyconstruct is a generic analyser for
file formats and protocols based on the concept of defining data
structures in a declarative manner, rather than procedural code.

After having a .zip file dissector, and the ability to dump .zip files
into a more human-understandable format, and by comparing it with .zip
files produced by other .zip archivers, we will be able to understand
what Archive::Zip is doing wrong, and how to improve it.

Project Schedule: The project can be finished in a timespan of 11 weeks.

References and Likely Mentors: I have contacted Shlomi Fish and cleared
my queries on the project. He is very helpful and encouraging and has
offered to mentor my project.

License: Artistic (1.0) + GPL

Bio: I am doing my final year in Computer Science and Engineering at
College of Engineering Chengannur, Kerala, India
(http://cec.ihrd.ac.in). I am a member of the college website team. At
college, I am the FLOSS Cell Chairman and have conducted classes and
seminars on Free Software at my college as well as a nearby school. I am
an active participant of technical events at college. I program in
C/C++, PHP, VB and build websites. It has been a year and a half since I
have converted fully to the GNU/Linux Operating System. Ever since then,
I have been exploring new territories and learning more. At one period,
I wrote articles on GNU/Linux (http://slashmedia.wordpress.com). I hope
to revive that site soon.

I have recently became interested in Perl. I have done a Webmin clone
project in Perl as part of college project. It helped me to understand
basic Perl. I use the vim editor for all programming.

My intense desire to learn more and contribute to the Free Software
community makes me feel that I am the right person for this project.

Eligibility: I meet Google's legal requirements. I can provide
paperwork.