Hi all,
We've been talking about this on-and-off at Wind River for a while now,
but it now seems like a reasonable time to bring a proposal to the OE
community at large. We're thinking about creating a new layer to house
recipes, etc. for networking packages. I'll try to address what seem to
be the most immediate questions (certainly the ones we've been thinking
most about any time I've discussed this with anyone):
Who would use this?
The intent is that this would be a layer generally useful directly on
top of the Yocto Project / OE-core, but it would also draw from and
compliment meta-oe. Right now I'm imagining two main groups interested
in this layer.
- Anyone building a small networking device (eg. a home router /
bridge / switch).
- Anyone wanting to add network services to their device (eg.
anything that might benefit from a small ftp/tftp server)
What will it include?
The focus should be on networking protocols, daemons, servers and utilities.
The plan is for a staged approach. Initially we're going to bring forward a
number of recipes from OE Classic that aren't currently in OE-core or the
meta-oe layer. The short list right now is:
- aoetools
- openldap
- quagga
- radvd
- tftp-hpa
- traceroute
- tunctl
- vblade
- vlan
- xl2tpd
The next two stages would run concurrently, with Wind River
contributing a number of recipes we intend to support for the
long-term. That list is still being firmed up but will include:
- freeradius
- netcat
- racoon2
- rdist
There's about another six or seven packages on the short list right
now, generally in the same vein.
The other stage is migrating packages that seem like obvious fits into
this layer from meta-oe. The current list under consideration would
be:
- atftp
- bridge-utils
- dnsmasq
- dnsmasq-dbus
- inetutils
- ipsec-tools
- iw
- libnet
- libnfnetlink
- net-snmp
- ntp
- ntp-ssl
- openvpn
- ptpd
- rp-pppoe
- samba
- strongswan
- talloc
- tcpdump
- vsftpd
That's a lot of stuff, are you going to organize it somehow?
The plan is that we will have subdirectories for logical groups of
recipes in much the same way meta-oe is organized today. Groupings I
would propose right now would be:
- recipes-daemons
- containing stuff like atftp, dnsmasq, racoon2, radvd, etc.
- recipes-protocols
- containing stuff like quagga, openldap, xl2tpd, maybe iscsi if it
appears, etc.
- recipes-support
- containing the rest, aoetools, bridge-utils, traceroute, etc.
This is definitely the least-clear part of our plan so far and would
need the most feedback and fine-tuning, I expect.
Why move anything from meta-oe?
"Networking" covers such a broad area and touches so much that it
really seems like 'meta-networking' should be a home for all of the
embedded networking bits. Leaving some parts in meta-oe and having the
rest in meta-networking would ultimately seem a bit arbitrary.
Who is 'we'?
Wind River is volunteering to maintain the layer and any recipes we
contribute at the outset. For recipes imported from OE Classic it'd be
great if the maintainers there continued ownership, but if that's not
possible, WR will also sign up for general maintenance. For recipes
imported from meta-oe we would hope that the current maintainers would
continue support in meta-networking once it's created. WR definitely
won't be able to do this alone so we're hoping for help from everyone
here.
When are you doing this?
I've been working on a prototype on and off for the last little bit but
considering the scope and potential impact, it seemed best to open up
the discussion here first and if it seemed like a generally desirable
thing, we'd get some version of this up and available within a few days
of consensus.
So what does everyone think? Awesome idea? Terrible idea? (Hopefully)
something in between? All feedback is welcome.
--
Joe MacDonald, Sr. Member of Technical Staff, Linux Products Group, Wind River
direct 613.270.5750 mobile 613.291.7421 fax 613.592.2283
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