GSoC 2023 MFSBSD Integration Project

Hi all,

I'm Shaun, a student who has been poking around with FreeBSD since the
end of last year (installing onto various systems, recompiling the
kernel for fun, simple stuff), and I figure I'd join FreeBSD's GSoC
program this year and contribute to the project.

I picked out the project "Integrate MFSBSD into the release building
tools." The basic idea is to integrate MFSBSD, which generates an
image that contains a minimal FreeBSD installation that is completely
loaded into memory, into the release build tools. This will allow
MFSBSD images of weekly snapshots to be generated automatically,
rather than waiting for someone to manually generate one when new
versions of FreeBSD are released, as well as facilitating testing
of these images.

I have already started some preliminary work on it (building
MFSBSD for the upcoming 14.0 and familiarzing myself with FreeBSD's
build tools) to get a feel for what I'll be trying to integrate into
the release building tools.

I've contacted Brad Davis <brd at FreeBSD dot org>, who was originally
listed as the mentor for the project on the GSoC Ideas wiki page.
Unfortunately, I have yet to have received a response. I've checked the
src tree and it seems like their last commit was dated to October 2022.

I've talked about this in the freebsd-soc IRC channel, and jrm has
kindly pointed me to this mailing list as well as Martin Matuska
<mm at FreeBSD dot org>, who maintains MFSBSD. I've tried contacting
Martin over email yesterday and have not gotten a response.

I'm wondering if anyone on this list is able and willing to be my
mentor for this project, or if there are any other build tools-related
projects I could work on for GSoC 2023?

Thanks,
Shaun Loo