Subject: Re: IPF in our source tree
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Christos Zoulas <christos@astron.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 06/01/2007 15:06:04
In article <465FEDFA.1090405@iki.fi>,
Martti Kuparinen  <martti.kuparinen@iki.fi> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>While reading the IPF source code (in preparation for 4.1.23 import) I noticed
>few things which I don't understand:
>
>- Why did we perform s/ipfattach/iplattach/ and s/ipfdetach/ipldetach/ ?
>   Any objections if I revert back to the original version?

I don't know why those changed.

>- Why was the use of caddr_t deprecated? I'm fine with void*, I'd just like to
>   know the technical reason for this...

Because caddr_t is a historical accident. It was meant to be void *, at a
time when void did not exist. Using void * instead of caddr_t eliminates
a large number of useless casts and helps lint with alignment warnings.
It should really be fixed upstream.

>- In some files under src/sys/dist/ipf/netinet the original code checks
>   the return value from BCOPYIN() but we have removed those checks. Why?
>   Any objections if I revert back to the original version?

The macros need to be made to work properly both from userland and kernel.

>- Some fuctions (e.g. fr_sttab_destroy) were converted from the old K&R(?)
>   style to the new ANSI(?) C style. Why? There are still functions using
>   the old style. Any objections if I revert back to the original version?

All the code should be converted to ansi upstream. Coordinate with Darren.

>The reason I'm asking these is because I'd like to keep the number of changes
>as small as possible (and feed all our changes to Darren so he can include
>them in the official IPF code). This makes my life as the IPF maintainer much
>easier...

Well, it would be nice if our improvements made it back to the original code
instead of having to maintain large sets of diffs locally.

christos