== Google Summer of Code 2021 ==
**Augment PostGIS 3.2 with GIST support added to PG14**
''Expected outcome'': Speed up GiST index building in PostGIS
''Skills required'': C or willing to learn, ability to compile PostgreSQL code, ability to compile PostGIS code
''Mentors'': Giuseppe Broccolo [https://github.com/glukhovn]
''Difficulty'': Medium
``Student Test'':
1. git clone PostGIS code from one of PostGIS repos -
2. git clone code from PostgreSQL git repo (master branch) -
Compile both.
''Additional detail'':
Recently this patch which adds
more infrastructure to the GiST has been included in PG14. It should speed
up the build of a GiST index after some (fast) pre-sorting of the data
which needs to be indexed. Some tests for the PG's internal type point
(that uses Zsort as fast pre-sorting of the data) showed that the build is
up to 5 times faster.
I'd like to study a possible implementation for PostGIS data types.
Basically, it would require to add this support function
and this other one
in the operator classes which use the GiST infrastructure (e.g. this one
).