Re: small fix to netatalk

2009/8/3 Robert N. M. Watson <rwatson_at_freebsd.org>:
>
> On 3 Aug 2009, at 09:11, Frank Lahm wrote:
>
>> I just subscribed here so I can't followup neatly which will break
>> threading, sorry for that.
>>
>> If appropiate please also provide any patches upstream. Thanks!
>> Though I'm not sure _what_ you're really patching here, as the patch
>> doesn't match neither upstream head nor branch-2-0 ?
>
> This is a patch against the kernel netatalk code in FreeBSD, specifically,
> against address configuration for phase I addresses. Forgive a lack of
> knowledge of the netatalk project itself, but I had assumed we basically
> owned the kernel bits and were supposed to make sure they kept working, and
> you guys owned the userspace bits.

Yes, of course.
I'm sorry to say, but apparently I was too lazy to check the relation
between "our" sys/netatalk/*.[c|h] [1] stuff and the FreeBSD stuff.
As it turns out we have some very old and very unmaintained code in
our repo which was imported way back then when Netatalk was brought to
SF.net in the first place. Since then nobody every really has worked
on it.
Current Netatalk development focuses on userspace stuff. Afaik none of
us doing active development has any decent knowledge of the AppleTalk
protocol implementations of BSD or Solaris.

> We should probably talk regardless as one of the big things we appear to be
> missing for the kernel netatalk code is a decent regression suite -- I have
> some casual local tests, but over the years we've picked up several reports
> of regressions (8 appears to have regressed with respect to multiple network
> interfaces being available, for example), and I know very little about the
> wire protocol. If you guys have any unit tests ...

No, we don't. Only for the userlevel AFP protocol.

> ... for kernel netatalk services, ...

Fwiw:
the usage of the term netatalk for the kernel implementation of the
link-layer AppleTalk protocoll is confusing. I guess the naming rules
in FreeBSD CVS joined net with atalk to form netatalk, but that's only
the name of the directory containg the atalk implementation.

> that would be excellent, but if not, perhaps you can provide some guidance
> on what sorts of units tests would be appropriate.

>From our (or at least my) perspective, we're focusing on the AFP
protocol and our ressources are sparse. Also note that Mac OS X 10.6
will ship withouh AppleTalk. The words of dropping AppleTalk support
and the userlevel daemons atalkd and papd who use it have already been
heared twice on netatalk-dev_at_sf.net. Few are still using it, fewer
know it, nobody maintains it.
A year or two back in time I would have been tempted to step up and
pick up AT development and would then have asked you for some advice
on how to get to know developping networking stuff in the FreeBSD
kernel. But that was then.

Sorry for the noise.

Regards,
-Frank

[1]
http://netatalk.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/netatalk/netatalk/sys/netatalk/