[uClinux-dev] Upgrading to newer bridge-utils

[Philip Craig]

glhs329 at gmail.com wrote:
> The bridge-utils package is pretty old (0.9.6), so I looked into what
> it would take to upgrade (the latest is 1.2, see
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=26089). I
> encountered a problem building 1.2 (and posted a query to the bridge
> mail list), but had no problem porting bridge-utils-1.1 into the
> uClinux environment. The only "patch" to submit is the makefile that
> deals with running configure and the romfs target.
> 
> I also downloaded the original 0.9.6, and discovered the uClinux-dist
> package contains several changes that I can't sort out. I suspect some
> changes are fix bugs, but other changes add or modify the original
> package's behavior ("brctl show ANY").

The changes I can see are:

1. Makefile changes to get it to build.

2. Change 'brctl show' to take an argument, with 'brctl show ANY' giving
the old behaviour. This is just a way to show a single bridge. I don't
think the user interface to it matters. It would be more logical to just
make the bridge argument optional, rather than specifying ANY to show
them all. Or add a new command to show a single bridge.

3. Only call br_make_bridge_list() for 'brctl show'. This is a
performance enhancement for large numbers of bridges.

4. Allow 'brctl show' to show up to 1024 bridges, rather than 32. This
change may be buggy, the CVS comment says it still only displays 62. I
wonder if there is a way to make this handle any number.

> So what's the procedure for moving forward? Does this group know the
> history behind the uClinux changes, and whether current projects still
> rely on them?

We want to keep these changes. No objections to cleaning them up though.
And we should submit them upstream this time (except for some of the
Makefile changes). If you only want to do the Makefile changes, that's
fine, we can sort the rest out.

> How do we trade off retaining old "enhancements" without
> becoming tied to old versions? I noticed uClinux-dist-test includes a
> new (2.4) pppd, and kept the old by providing pppd-2.3. Would a
> similar approach work for bridge-utils?

Shouldn't need to keep the old version in this case.