The Unconference
The summit follows an “unconference” format. There is no pre-planned schedule; instead, attendees propose sessions on the first day based on what they want to discuss. Since the event moved to Munich this year, it was a great opportunity for me to join and meet people from other communities face-to-face.
Lightning Talks
During the “Lightning talks” session, mentors had a short slot to introduce their projects. I presented the project I mentored this summer: vhost-user devices in Rust on macOS and *BSD.
The student, Wenyu Huang, worked on extending rust-vmm crates
(specifically vhost, vhost-user-backend, and vmm-sys-utils) to support
vhost-user devices on non-Linux POSIX systems. This work is important for
portability, allowing rust-vmm components to run also on macOS and BSD.
You can find the full details and the code in the final project report.
This project focused primarily on the rust-vmm ecosystem rather than QEMU
itself. This was possible thanks to QEMU acting as an umbrella organization,
allowing related projects like rust-vmm to participate in the program.
Sessions and Networking
Networking with other mentors was a key part of the event. It was nice to see that QEMU is well-recognized; many mentors I met were familiar with the project, which made it easy to start conversations. We exchanged views on how to handle the mentorship lifecycle, from interviewing GSoC applicants (and the impact of AI on that process) to the coding phase. We shared tips on how to best help students during the summer, such as setting up regular meetings and maintaining effective communication.
I also attended several sessions covering different topics. The most interesting discussions were:
- Operating System Summit: A gathering of maintainers from various kernels (Linux, BSD, etc.) to connect and share updates.
- Heterogeneous architectures: A discussion on how AI systems and workloads are driving the requirement for heterogeneous architectures (GPUs, FPGAs, and other accelerators).
- Funding your open source project: A session on sustainability, focusing on how other open source projects manage funding and resources.
- GSoC feedback session: A meeting with the Google program admins to share experiences and suggest improvements for next year.
The “sticker table” and “chocolate table” are traditions of the summit. I enjoyed trying chocolates from different countries. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any QEMU stickers to share this time. We should definitely plan to bring a stack for next year!
Looking Ahead
We really believe that GSoC is a great and useful program, as it brings new ideas and contributors to our community. We will definitely apply again for GSoC 2026, and we hope to have the chance to join the Mentor Summit again next year!
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