Re: fixing coda in -current

[Hauke Fath <hauke%Espresso.Rhein-Neckar.DE@localhost>]

At 17:52 Uhr +0100 20.11.2018, Maxime Villard wrote:
>Le 20/11/2018 ?Ý 16:18, Greg Troxel a ?©crit :
>> I used to use it, and may again.  So I'd like to see it stay, partly
>> because I think it's good to keep NetBS relevant in the fileystem
>> research world.  I am expecting to see new upstream activity.
>
>The problem is that CODA is not relevant in this world either... Developed
>since 1987, hasn't gone very far, seems to have been dropped by everybody
>except us and Linux.

Well, it was a successful research project, yielding (IIRC) one and a half
dozen papers. And then, like many other CS research projects that NetBSD
harbours (file systems, packet filters...) it did not move on towards
production quality.

Another thing changed: When CODA was conceived, the average PC network
client ran MSDOS plus a lightweight client for whatever file sharing
protocol the organization had chosen. Now, the client-side network code is
much more interwoven  with the client's OS, to the point where you choose
the server to match the client. Planting an alien code base into such an
environment is hard like, say, NetBSD chasing GNOME.

But... for those of us who for good reasons deploy nfs-mounted user homes,
CODA (or something like it, but it is one of a kind) would be a dream come
true. Whenever the network goes down, people line up at my door and demand
a way of disconnected operation.

ISTR that somebody on the CODA mailing-list suggested a re-implementation
as userland file-system, but I don't think much has happened on that front.

My 0,02 EUR.

Cheerio,
hauke


--
"It's never straight up and down"     (DEVO)