I maintain the gitlabhq instance for our infrastructure, I'll be happy to take it up if you guys are ok. Setting up gitlabhq is pretty easy, we might have some plumbing work for importing the existing public keys/repos. Gitlabhq uses gitolite under the hood for repository management, so from a packaging standpoint its only the rails stack that we'll need to package and gitolite can have its own rpm.
Ranjib, that would be great! Would you be willing to play the role of mentor? It sounds like it would be a good role since you have the right expertise to provide guidance, and that way you would only need to check in on the progress.
Btw, I talked to a few people who know the GSoC program and they agreed that a proof-of-concept is sufficient for a project to be considered complete. If you go further and get it all running on a production instance w/ full cooperation from the infra & engineering teams, then bonus!
There is a chance that the project doesn't get matched up with a student. In that case, then I would say you can just roll forward with the project with whomever comes forward. We should know fairly soon, so waiting to see how the cards fall shouldn't hold up getting started for too long.
I also want to mention that I heard back from the Gitlab lead. He said he'd be willing to provide all the help we need to make this happen!
I suppose that means he would be willing to be a co-mentor.
Go git, go!
-Dan