"Rewriting kernfs and procfs" - GSoC'12

[ambarisha b <b.ambarisha%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 1:37 AM, Elad Efrat <elad%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> On 2012-03-07 6:12 PM, ambarisha b wrote:
>
>> I also found two other projects not on GSoC page really interesting.
>> "Rewriting kernfs and procfs". Can it be worked on as a GSoC project,
>> because it isn't tagged GSoC?
>
> I want to see that done, by porting the pseudofs layer from FreeBSD and
> rewriting kernfs/procfs in terms of pseudofs. If you decide to do that,
> I can probably mentor it, so let me know.

I couldn't find much documentation about pseudofs on the internet. So,
I dug a little into FreeBSD's code (src/sys/fs/pseudofs/pseudofs.h) to
inspect what pseudofs layer offers. FreeBSD's procfs has been built
over their pseudofs. I studied some parts of it. I, now, have a good
idea of how procfs is using pseudofs. But, to port the pseudofs, how
do I realize the differences between NetBSD and FreeBSD which effect
pseudofs?

The project description page [1] also talks about writing procfs in
such a way as to be able to allow external code to add/delete its
entries dynamically through an API. How would this work and what are
its implications?

Cheers
Ambarish

[1] - http://wiki.netbsd.org/projects/project/kernfs-rewrite/