netdev - Re: bring back IPX and NCPFS, please!

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Message-ID: <20181109182046.GA1380@1wt.eu>
Date:   Fri, 9 Nov 2018 19:20:46 +0100
From:   Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>
To:     "Johannes C. Schulz" <enzephalon76@...glemail.com>
Cc:     netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: bring back IPX and NCPFS, please!

On Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 06:30:14PM +0100, Johannes C. Schulz wrote:
> Hello Willy, hello Stephen
> 
> Thankyou for your reply.
> But I'm not able to maintain or code these modules. I'm just a bloody
> user/webdev.

That's what we've all claimed before taking over something many years
ago you know :-)  The most important is time and willingness to try to
do it.

You could first look at the latest kernel supporting those, check if
they still used to work fine in your environment (not everyone has
access to these ones anymore), and if so, then try to copy that code
over newer kernels. Sometimes it will not build with an obvious error
that you'll be able to fix by yourself, sometimes it will be harder
and you'll have to ask for help and/or figure API changes in "git log".
After working many hours on this you'll be much more at ease with this
code and you'll possibly be able to make it work on your kernel version.
This is already a huge step because even if you don't consider it as
being in a mergeable state (too hackish, dirty etc), you have the
option to run it as your own patch for a while.

After this you'll seek some more help about the process needed to get
these merged back and to maintain them as long as you estimate you can
(possibly mark it deprecated and keep it as long as you can). And who
knows, given nothing changes in this area these days, maybe it will be
trivial to maintain this FS for another decade and you'll have learned
something fun and useful.

> It would be really nice if these modules will find a good
> maintainer!

Just think again about the advantages you have over many other people :
  - access to the environment
  - real use case for the feature

There's nothing wrong with trying and failing multiple times, even giving
up if you find the task too hard. But giving up before trying is quite
sad in your situation.

Cheers,
Willy