1 # $NetBSD: TODO,v 1.14 2005/09/27 20:15:15 hubertf Exp $ 2 3 THINGS TO BE DONE: 4 5 [ Note that this list does not include change requests filed via 'gnats'. 6 For information about them, mail query-pr (a] NetBSD.org. ] 7 8 This is a list of things that need to be done for NetBSD. Some of 9 these projects are small, others are large. Some are extremely 10 important, others are enhancements to make the system more flexible 11 for the wide variety of NetBSD users and their applications. 12 13 In general there are some guidelines for work to be included in 14 NetBSD. Chief among these are: 15 16 (1) Keep GPLed stuff out of the kernel. 17 (2) Introduce little to no more GPLed stuff as non-optional 18 components of the user environment. 19 (3) Only clean code, that lends itself to further enhancement 20 (4) Keep architecture dependent code out of architecture independent 21 directories 22 23 Associated with some entries are login names which indicate persons or 24 groups who may already be working on that problem. This isn't to say 25 that others shouldn't also look at it, but consultation with other 26 parties may result in less duplicated work. A directory of these 27 persons can be found after the todo list itself. 28 29 Please don't hesitate to suggest more projects for this list. 30 Suggestions, comments, etc to projects (a] NetBSD.org. 31 32 High Kernel: 33 swap fixes: 34 swap to file of dynamic size; see apollo 35 nfs: 36 kernel support for lockd(8), lockf(3) 37 clean up support for LKM and protections checking (cgd) 38 39 User programs: 40 rwall nfs-mountees on shutdown 41 add detachment to window(1) 42 clean up gas config files, set up common defines 43 44 Pie-in-the-Sky: 45 someone should actually test all the netiso stuff. 46 47 Documentation: 48 modify sys docs to reflect NetBSD/arch-specific stuff 49 clean up src/share/man/{man0,tools} so that we can generate a printable 50 version from the manpages again. 51 52 i386 kernel support: 53 better ways of accessing BIOS, i/o space. some exportable to 54 user space. See mach3,linux dos emulator 55 i686 optimized versions of copyin/copyout/memcpy/memset/etc. lazy 56 floating-point context switching should be implemented as well. 57 make use of sysenter/sysexit instructions on PIII/4 and Athlon for 58 reducing syscall overhead. 59 60 This is a list of suggested smaller projects (in no particular order): 61 62 + speed up sort(1) by using mmap(2) rather than temp files 63 + autoconf version of nawk, for use in non-NetBSD pkgsrc 64 + port valgrind to NetBSD for pkgsrc, then use it to do an audit of 65 any memory leakage 66 + implement POSIX async IO 67 + help in implementing various things in pkgsrc 68 + simplify some of the quirks in our build system 69 + help out with scripts for tgm/autobuild 70 + some PR fixing/re-categorising/investigating/closing 71 + investigate zebra or quagga in gnusrc rather than routed 72 + do a type-punned pointer sweep for gcc3 (and fix the problems, not 73 the symptoms) 74 + kernel fine-grained locking 75 + write a BSD-licensed web browser 76 + write a BSD-licensed privacy guard like gnupg or pgp 77 (see http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/bpg/) 78 + perhaps look at putting wonka into src/ (with uuencoded class lib?) 79 + investigate ProPolice 80 + document autoconf framework 81 + write an overview document for openssl and certificates 82 + documentation project help 83 + investigate which userland utilities and daemons would benefit from 84 kqueue, and rewrite them 85 + better testing in general; in particular, more regression tests 86 + better LKM version checking 87 + add a native scheme interpreter 88 + add platform support for TenDRA compiler suite 89 + merge moused(8) with wsmoused(8) as a new work mode (i.e. serial) 90 + re-design our mbuf/network buffer memory handling so that it is simpler 91 and can handle zero copy tcp 92 + re-design our signal handling path. It is far too complicated and will not 93 be easy to accommodate MP code 94 + Examine our vnode locking and vfs layer and see what needs to be changed 95 for locking in layered filesystems to really work 96 + Make mountd(8) update the in-kernel exports list for each file system 97 atomically. Many parts of the utility will need a rewrite, but the kernel 98 functionality is already there (just enable the "notyet" blocks of code in 99 sys/nfs/nfs_export.c). 100 + Kerberize more services like ftp, ftpd, rsh, rshd, rlogind, ... 101 (see PR bin/31378) 102
