Re: I think I want to help

[Marco Gerards]

arief# <arief_m_utama@telkomsel.co.id> writes:

> How do I help to make GNU/Hurd reached 1.0 release ASAP? (I know, a
> little bit of over-optimism ;-)) 

Start hacking. :)

> I don't have a clear clue of what is GNU/Hurd current status is. I've
> checked hurd.gnu.org, debian-hurd page, hurd.gnufans.org, but all I can
> found is progress info from one year ago. (even tasks and TODO file
> seems like a little bit outdated).

If something looks outdated to you, just ask to make sure.

> I can get some scattered info that we are trying to use OSKIT-Mach now
> (are we? howcome no debs for oskit-mach?), heading towards L4
> microkernel. Some essential info I can get also about a need of pthread,
> a real filesystem (ext2/ext3?), and porting lots of applications.

OSKIT-Mach is not used by most people.  The port to L4 is not done
yet.

For pthread support there is something there already.  But AFAIK the
plan is porting NPTL (in glibc) to GNU/Hurd.  One of the most
important things that need to be done is writing TLS support.

Ext2 is already supported, but the maximum size of the filesystem is
about 2 GB.  Ext3 is not supported yet.

Ognyan is already working on these problems.  See his webpage:
http://debian.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/~ogi/hurd/ext3fs/

He already fixed the 2GB limit (Neal is reading the patch and trying to
get it into CVS). Ognyan is also working on ext3 support and will
release ext3 0.1 soon.

> What can this poor guy do to help in GNU/Hurd development? Is it ok to
> continue to develop using gnumach and hurd as found in debian
> repository?

You can:

1) Fix bugs.
2) Translate the webpages.
3) Write documentation.
4) Add missing features.
5) Port packages.
(etc)

> Can anyone post updated TODO/tasks list? For GNU/Hurd, and for Debian
> distributions of GNU/Hurd? a contact person lists can also be very
> useful, I believe.

Contact person list?  I am not sure what you mean, but you can reach
Hurd developers using the Hurd mailinglists and on IRC.

> I'm sorry if I don't offer much help.
> If these questions waste your valuable time, just ignore them, and I'll
> try to go forward by re-searching the mail-archive and googling around
> more.

Don't worry about that.  If you have questions and really can't find
answers, just ask them.

--
Marco