Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 25, 2016, at 4:42 PM, Ingo Schwarze <schwa...@usta.de> wrote: > > Hi Rodrigo, > > redirected to misc@, this is off-topic on tech@. > > Rodrigo Mosconi wrote on Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 06:54:32PM -0200: > >> I would like to receive some help/mentoring. I`m cursing a master degree >> course at PUC-Rio, and I need to "create a useful program that performs a >> service of interest to anyone other than exsively the student." So I would >> like to create something to the openbsd project. >> >> I would like to know in which areas need some work? I have partial time to >> work on it and only this half year to do it. Some of the old google summer >> of code is still need? There are some need to a new daemon, or replace an >> old one, aligned with the openbsd style ( configuration files, privsep, >> plegde)? > > For a beginner, it's usually easier to do bugfixing in high-qualitive > existing code than to do full-scale auditing or refactoring in > low-quality existing code, and for a beginner, it is even harder > to write new high-quality code from scratch. So to anyone considering > similar projects, make sure that you start regularly finding bugs > and sending patches to fix them at least one year before you want > to do a project that involves writing a new program for OpenBSD > from scratch. Otherwise, it's gonna be tough. > > Besides, we have a hard time advising people what they could do if > we don't know what they are capable of. "Master student at a > university" doesn't mean a lot. There are people who don't study > anything, suddenly pop up out of nowhere, and do good work right > away. There are people with a degree who fail even at simple tasks. > Rodrigo, according to the ChangeLog, you worked on cwm(1) and > cfengine so far. Given that amount of public information, the only > person who can judge your skills is yourself. > > We sometimes say "/usr/bin/" is full, meaning that adding additional > programs doesn't necessarily make the system better. If done without > good reason, it just makes the system larger and less simple. > Consequently, finding a project of the kind "write a new program" > is about ten times harder than finding a project of the kind "improve > an existing program", even for an experienced developer. > > All that said, there _are_ some programs that need to be rewritten. > The one that is most sorely missing is ppp(8), a PPP client program. > That may not be a simple task, and it may not be easy to find a > mentor. The people most knowledgable in that area live in Japan, > they are very focussed and very hard-working people, and they are > *very* busy. > > There is other stuff that requires rewriting, in alphabetical order: > > * adduser(8)/useradd(8): > Needs to be unified into one single
This seems like a project that would end in arguments over which to consolidate to. "Adduser is better", no "useradd is better" > program and cleaned up. > * dig(8)/nslookup(8)/host(8): > A simpler replacement not using external libraries would be useful. > * ftp(8) is very old and suffering from bitrot; the last attempt to > rewrite it trickled out with no obvious conclusion, i don't > exactly know why. > * ldapd(8) is decent code, but sorely lacks a maintainer. > * ldappasswd(1) would be nice to have. > * lpd(8)/lpc(8)/lpr(1) is very old and suffering from bitrot. > * traceroute(8) needs to be extended by the functionality of > tcptraceroute. > > Some GSOC projects may still be relevant, but one has to admit that > it is rare that GSOC projects produce code that actually gets > committed. Even among those that succeeded, only a minority produced > code good enough to actually get used. If people look for a project > rather than simply working on what they are interested in, chances > for success are quite slim. > > That said, don't despair, but you really need to be able to > realistically judge your own skills and interests, make up your own > mind, and take initiative. > > Yours, > Ingo
