We users could actually step up more and contribute more documentation; I have been on this long enough to see the help that dave, wes and other long time members give. I am amazed at how many people are apparently thrown into SNMP development full bore who have had no company training nor mentoring.
The one area that especially could benefit from end user documentation is in the area of embedded development and integrating SNMP. Innumerable developers have asked for help here with regards to cross compilation for various embedded platforms and from what I see they get some very useful advice yet almost none of them have contributed documentation.. How about some of us contribute to some higher level documentation, like wes suggests, as we learn and use the agent? I think that would have more value than freedom with in-code comments - the Net-SNMP project is like a huge code integration engine and there are so many ways to extend and customize it - more documentation on it's design and how it works would be very useful and we users can certainly drive that and make working with SNMP via the Net-SNMP agent more accessible / seem less intimidating. Max On 5/24/10, Wes Hardaker <harda...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote: >>>>>> On Mon, 24 May 2010 07:24:49 +0300, Omer Zak <w...@zak.co.il> said: > > OZ> The comments situation in Net-SNMP is grave. > > Omer, > > One of the key cool things about open source projects is that you can > take the code and do what you wish, assuming you follow the licensing > clauses attached to it. Thus, you're of course more than able to go > fork the code (multiple times if you feel that'll help). > > However, I think you've found one single situation that you're pointing > out was a problem and are now talking about starting up a entirely new > project because of a single problem? Rather than try to work it out and > suggest a new patch to resolve the issue? Again, one of the cool things > about open source is that you can do what you please with it (again, > within the bounds of the licensing). > > OZ> I already wasted lot of time trying to understand Net-SNMP agent code > OZ> due to insufficient comments. > > One thing I've found working for years in this space is that far too few > people/companies are willing to pay for documentation. And that always > depresses me (but the choice generally comes down to "accept new feature > without documentation" or "don't grow at all"). > > The project has a fair amount of documentation describing how to write > agent plugins, but very little on the internals of how the agent it > works. I agree with you on that completely. Dave has tireless worked > on helping people on the mailing lists for years and years and years > with whatever problems they have had. He's been more helpful than any > other person on any open source project I can think of. So if you truly > feel he was malicious about the comment stripping I think you haven't > fully analyzed the complete history of the project. > > With regards to the // vs /* issue, I assure you the default policy by > people applying patches (that I've ever seen) is not to "strip them" > rather than "convert them". No one has said that and I doubt you can > find evidence to suggest otherwise (please feel free to go search for > it). > > I hope your day improves as you're obviously upset about this issue but > I think your proposed solution seems a bit drastic. But again, as I > said, to each his own when it comes to open source. Personally, I think > it would be more productive to propose documentation patches or comment > patches or what-have-you. > > It always amazes me how much "coding style" (// vs /*, eg) tends to > bring about more flame-wars than anything else. I've had people tell me > to remove my "funny"-ish comments from patch submissions to the KDE > project before they'd be accepted. Personally, I decided not to fork > KDE over the issue. But I suppose I could have. > > -- > Wes Hardaker > Please mail all replies to net-snmp-coders@lists.sourceforge.net > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Net-snmp-coders mailing list > Net-snmp-coders@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/net-snmp-coders > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Net-snmp-coders mailing list Net-snmp-coders@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/net-snmp-coders
