1# $NetBSD: TODO,v 1.17 2011/08/09 16:14:41 jruoho Exp $ 2 3THINGS 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@NetBSD.org. ] 7 8This is a list of things that need to be done for NetBSD. Some of 9these projects are small, others are large. Some are extremely 10important, others are enhancements to make the system more flexible 11for the wide variety of NetBSD users and their applications. 12 13In general there are some guidelines for work to be included in 14NetBSD. 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 23Associated with some entries are login names which indicate persons or 24groups who may already be working on that problem. This isn't to say 25that others shouldn't also look at it, but consultation with other 26parties may result in less duplicated work. A directory of these 27persons can be found after the todo list itself. 28 29Please don't hesitate to suggest more projects for this list. 30Suggestions, comments, etc to projects@NetBSD.org. 31 32High Kernel: 33 swap fixes: 34 swap to file of dynamic size; see apollo 35 nfs: 36 kernel support for lockd(8), lockf(3) 37 38User programs: 39 rwall nfs-mountees on shutdown 40 add detachment to window(1) 41 clean up gas config files, set up common defines 42 43Pie-in-the-Sky: 44 someone should actually test all the netiso stuff. 45 46Documentation: 47 modify sys docs to reflect NetBSD/arch-specific stuff 48 clean up src/share/man/{man0,tools} so that we can generate a printable 49 version from the manpages again. 50 51i386 kernel support: 52 better ways of accessing BIOS, i/o space. some exportable to 53 user space. See mach3,linux dos emulator 54 i686 optimized versions of copyin/copyout/memcpy/memset/etc. lazy 55 floating-point context switching should be implemented as well. 56 make use of sysenter/sysexit instructions on PIII/4 and Athlon for 57 reducing syscall overhead. 58 59This is a list of suggested smaller projects (in no particular order): 60 61+ speed up sort(1) by using mmap(2) rather than temp files 62+ autoconf version of nawk, for use in non-NetBSD pkgsrc 63+ port valgrind to NetBSD for pkgsrc, then use it to do an audit of 64 any memory leakage 65+ help in implementing various things in pkgsrc 66+ simplify some of the quirks in our build system 67+ help out with scripts for tgm/autobuild 68+ some PR fixing/re-categorising/investigating/closing 69+ investigate zebra or quagga in gnusrc rather than routed 70+ do a type-punned pointer sweep for gcc3 (and fix the problems, not 71 the symptoms) 72+ kernel fine-grained locking 73+ write a BSD-licensed web browser 74+ perhaps look at putting wonka into src/ (with uuencoded class lib?) 75+ document autoconf framework 76+ write an overview document for openssl and certificates 77+ documentation project help 78+ investigate which userland utilities and daemons would benefit from 79 kqueue, and rewrite them 80+ add a native scheme interpreter 81+ add platform support for TenDRA compiler suite 82+ merge moused(8) with wsmoused(8) as a new work mode (i.e. serial) 83+ re-design our mbuf/network buffer memory handling so that it is simpler 84 and can handle zero copy tcp 85+ re-design our signal handling path. It is far too complicated and will not 86 be easy to accommodate MP code 87+ Examine our vnode locking and vfs layer and see what needs to be changed 88 for locking in layered filesystems to really work 89+ Make mountd(8) update the in-kernel exports list for each file system 90 atomically. Many parts of the utility will need a rewrite, but the kernel 91 functionality is already there (just enable the "notyet" blocks of code in 92 sys/nfs/nfs_export.c). 93+ Kerberize more services like ftp, ftpd, rsh, rshd, rlogind, ... 94 (see PR bin/31378) 95