writing libnetstat for Summer of Code 2009

[Cipta H]

Hello everyone,

I'm a college student studying CS in Columbia University. I'm
interested in doing this project for Summer of Code 2009:

> Libprocstat and libnetstat
> Suggested Summer of Code 2009 project idea
>
> Technical contact: Robert Watson
>
> Create, similar to libmemstat, wrapper libraries to support monitoring and management applications to avoid direct use of kvm. Three parts to the project: for each of the above, add kernel support to export data in a less ABI-sensitive way using sysctl, write a library to present the information in an extensible way to applications, and update applications to use the library instead of reaching directly into kernel memory / consuming sysctls. The goal is to allow the kernel implementation to change without breaking applications and requiring them to be recompiled, and to allow monitoring functions to be extended without breaking applications. This should also facilitate writing new classes of monitoring and profiling tools.

I'm going to focus mainly on netstat, however. Aside from that, I have
a few questions:
1. Aside from the bug report, has there been any other discussion on
this issue? I can't seem to find any in the mailing lists.
2. How much experience in C do you need to do this project? Do you
need to know the FreeBSD kernel?

Thanks in advance,

Cipta Herwana