RE: [ns] improving the ns development

[Neundorf Alexander <Alexander.Neundorf.extern@icn.siemens.de>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Lloyd Wood [SMTP:l.wood@eim.surrey.ac.uk]
> Sent:	Monday, August 06, 2001 7:02 PM
> To:	Neundorf Alexander
> Cc:	'ns-users@isi.edu'
> Subject:	Re: [ns] improving the ns development
> 
> ns has a cvs server. It has had a cvs server for years, as you'll see
> if you look at the cvs web pages. Write access to that is restricted
> to trusted ns developers (come up with enough helpful patches and you
> can join the club), although anonymous read access is available, as is
> cvsweb.
> 
	Well, most people (at least me) start with small patches, which are not really worth posting if there is a more or less high barrier :-(
	One example: the gsm/gprs extension from Richa Jain would be a very good candidate for ns, or the BlueHoc from IBM, but since there are these barriers, they don't get into ns that fast. If they were inside ns, more people would test them, find bugs, extend them, fix them :-).
	Really.

> The main barrier to improving the ns development process is that ns is
> also a darpa research project (vint), and discussions concerning ns
> development in vint are not public, with the result that people
> outside the vint loop know less about where the ns vint people are
> active, what's being worked on and planned, etc. There's little
> outward communication.
> 
	Yes, that's the problem.

> Couple that with a bsdish model (knowledgeable few doing little after
> careful thought) rather than linux development model (clueless many
> doing lots - ns isn't a kernel, and spotting simulation errors needs
> greater clue than whining that the latest kernel wouldn't boot) and
> lack of available time to test and commit patches posted to the
> list... goodbye, third-party synergy. 
> 
	I really doubt this. I don't think that there are qualitative differences in software developing depending on which kind of software is developed. And I also think most people who *use* ns also more or less know the code of ns and therefor are not really "clueless". With more "core" ns developers on the mailing list they would become "knowledgeable" even faster.
	But as it is now, everybody hacks around, but since nobody sees the changes, it remains "desperate hacking" :-(


> Most of the remaining synergy
> comes from an ever-changing pool of students who are using ns in a
> desperate attempt to graduate.
> 
	(including me :-)

	I don't think ns needs any more features. What it needs is for the
> existing features to work together in a more coherent fashion.
> 
	Well, ns definitely misses support for mobile cellular systems (gsm, gprs, umts). There are extensions, but integrating them is not *that* easy, since they need a special version of ns, have to be applied in a special order and so on. And nobody knows how buggy or correct they are :-(

	Bye
	Alex