July 15, 2005 - Summer of Code: BitTorrent Peer Library For Perl

The Perl Foundation took part in Google's Summer of Code program and managed to get 8 projects funded. This is the sixth in a series of informal interviews finding out more information about thes e projects. Up now is Josh McAdams with "BitTorrent Peer Library For Perl".

Hi there! Tell us a bit about yourself, including age, where you are a student and what you are studying
My name is Josh McAdams. I'm 25 years old and am working on a Master's of Computer Science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock... hopefully I'll be done by the end of the year and can breath again.

You've had a Google Summer of Code project funded. What will you be doing? How will you be doing this? What's the final product?
My SoC project is to create a BitTorrent peer using Perl. Uri Guttman has volunteered to be my mentor, so we are going to use his Stem system to create a BitTorrent peer implementation. In the end, I hope to have something that I can upload to CPAN so that others can easily include BitTorrent downloads in their Perl programs.

How did you get interested in this topic?
I started listening to podcasts a few months ago and decided to brew my own podcatcher using Perl. However, some of the podcasts that I liked used BitTorrent for their file distribution method. I went searching for a set of modules that I could use in my scripts and came up empty handed.

Where do you see your project going after this summer?
Hopefully it will be a success and will continue to be maintained and live on CPAN.

Is there any way to track your progress over the next few months? Got a blog?
I haven't posted much about it yet, but I'll try to drop some entries in my journal.

Did you expect to get funded?
Not really. And of course, Google didn't help my confidence any by waiting until the day after their deadline to announce accepted projects.

Got a silly fact about yourself or the project?
I was going to to do the project anyway as part of my Master's thesis :) At least now I'll have some guidance and can make it good.

Originally posted at use.perl.org