BIRD 3.0-alpha0

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

Maria Matejka <maria.matejka at nic.cz> writes:

> Hello!
>
> On 3/4/22 11:14 PM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
>> Maria Matejka <maria.matejka at nic.cz> writes:
>> 
>>> To make it crystal clear, 3.0 stable won't be much optimized in the
>>> algorithmic or data structure way, this will happen later on. Anyway,
>>> thank you for all your wishes.
>> 
>> One question: What changes (if any) are necessary for the protocols to
>> run in multithreaded mode? I wouldn't mind taking a look at adding
>> support to the Babel protocol if you'd be interested in taking patches
>> at this stage?
>
> Simply, almost none compared to other changes inside BIRD. One of my 
> goals is to keep the protocols untouched if possible. What is needed, as 
> far as I can remember (list may be incomplete):
>
> * check that there is no global variable inside Babel (including static 
> variables inside functions)
> * check that nothing inside Babel touches directly any global data 
> structure and no quirk in Nest touches Babel directly
> * check that all timers are stopped before protocol sets itself DOWN 
> (this won't be needed in future, maybe)
> * in config.Y, request to run the protocol in its own loop
> * set the SKF_THREAD flag for all sockets
> * explicitly lock by birdloop_enter() and birdloop_leave() in CLI 
> commands like "show babel ..."

Thanks for the pointers!Those bits seem simple enough. The first two
items should be OK for Babel, the others need patches (but simple ones).

> For now, you can look at RPKI or BGP diff, anyway I'm going to write a
> blogpost specifically about internal protocol API, where to lock and
> how. Therefore, I think the most convenient time to do the Babel
> patching will be after publishing that blogpost, if you don't mind
> waiting.
>
> I won't refuse patches now, yet I think the best approach is
> postponing the work to the time when the blogpost is out and the API
> gets its final shape and description. I estimate that time to several
> months from now as there are some tasks (as described in my previous
> email) with higher priority.

Right, let's see if I get around to playing with this before then. If I
do, I may open a pull request with the fixes to Babel; I don't mind
rebasing if you do end up changing the requirements along the way.

-Toke