Future of netnatm: volunteer wanted -- and/or -- removal notice

[Robert Watson]

Dear all:

When the new link layer framework was introduced in 8.0, one of our ATM 
stacks, netnatm, was left behind.  As a result, it neither compiles nor runs 
in 8.x and 9.x.  This e-mail serves two purposes:

(1) To solicit a volunteer who can work on the netnatm stack in 9.x, with 
potential merge to 8.x, to get it back to functionality before 9.0 ships. 
This is the preferred course of action.

(2) To serve as notice that if we can't find a volunteer to do this, we will 
remove netnatm and associated parts from the tree in 9.0 since they'll have 
gone one major version neither compiling nor running.  This is the fallback 
plan.

I'm in no great rush to remove netnatm, having spent quite a bit of time 
making it work in our MPSAFE world order a couple of years ago.  However, the 
code is bitrotting and requires urgent attention if it's going to work again 
easily (the stack is changing around it, and because netnatm doesn't build, it 
will get only cursory and likely incorrect updates).  I'm happy to help funnel 
changes into the tree from non-committers, as well as answer questions about 
the network stack, but I have no hardware facilities for debugging or testing 
netnatm changes myself, nor, unfortunately, the time to work on the code.

In order to provide further motivation for potentially interested parties, 
here's the proposed six-month removal schedule:

28 July 2010		- Notice of proposed removal
28 October 2010		- Transmit of notice of proposed removal
28 January 2011		- Proposed removal date

This schedule may be updated as the 9.0 release schedule becomes more clear, 
or if there are obvious signs of improvement and just a couple more months 
would get it fixed :-).  And, if worst comes to worst and we can't find a 
volunteer, the code will live on in the source repository history if there's a 
desire to rejuvenate it in the future.

Thanks,

Robert

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge