reflum, On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 14:52 +0000, Steven Whitehouse wrote: > On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 13:52 +0000, mike.gair@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > In theory i'd be interested in maintaining it, > > but i'm not sure what amount of work is involved, > > have no experience of kernel, or where to start. > > > > Any ideas? > > > > > So the issue is basically that due to there being nobody currently > maintaining the DECnet stack, it puts a burden on the core network > maintainers when they make cross-protocol changes, as they have to > figure out what impact the changes are likely to have on the DECnet > stack. So its an extra barrier to making cross-protocol code changes. > > If there was an active maintainer who could be a source of knowledge > (and the odd patch to help out making those changes) then this issue > would largely go away. *nods* > The most important duty of the maintainer is just to watch whats going > on in the core networking development and to contribute the DECnet part > of that. So it would be most likely be more a reviewing of patches and > providing advice role, than one of writing patches (though it could be > that too) and ensuring that the code continues to function correctly by > testing it from time to time. > > The ideal maintainer would have an in-depth knowledge of the core Linux > networking stack (socket layer, dst and neigh code), the DECnet specs > and have a good knowledge of C. I guess I would fit mostly but I have no idea of the kernel internal stuff. Also I'm a bit short on time. > Bearing in mind the low patch volume (almost zero, except for core > stuff), it would probably be one of the subsystems with the least amount > of work to do in maintaining it. So in some ways, a good intro for a new > maintainer. Jup. This is very true. I hope we will find a new maintainer because of exactly this point. Maybe somebody like Mike Gair. > I do try and keep an eye on what get submitted to the DECnet code and > I'll continue to do that while it is still in the kernel. However, it is > now quite a long time since I last did any substantial work in the > networking area and things have moved on a fair bit in the mean time. I > don't have a lot of time to review DECnet patches these days and no way > to actually test any contributions against a real DECnet implementation. I'm glad you are still interested. I'm always happy when I see mails from you at the DECnet for Linux list. > So I'll provide what help I can to anybody who wants to take the role > on, within those limitations. I'm also happy to answer questions about > why things were done in a particular way, for example. > > It is good to know that people are still using the Linux DECnet code > too. It has lived far beyond the time when I'd envisioned it still being > useful :-) There are still some people interested in it. Btw. on Debian popcon counts 5356 users. -- Philipp. (Rah of PH2)
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