Re: What can I do?

[Alex Karasulu <ao...@bellsouth.net>]

Hi Brennan,

> I would like to help with this project.  I am a Java and .NET
> developer with a lot of web experience.

That's great!

> I also know Perl and I have maintained FreeBSD servers for years.  I
> have a Windows 2000 and MacOS X computer at home as well so I can do
> testing on several platforms.

Testing on all these platforms is something that we would like to do.  Perhaps you could for now look into using the server, evaluating it on these platforms.  If you can give us feedback and bug reports that would be excellent.  Do you have any experience with LDAP/Kerberos/DNS/DHCP?

> I would hope that this project would be compatible with a Java 1.3.1
> environment.

Sorry no.  It's not very feasible to write a stateful protocol server without the non-blocking IO constructs (Selectors) in NIO.  Really without JDK 1.4 this project would not exit.  Furthermore I'm sure 1.3 will quickly approach EOL.   Regardless getting the server to run on 1.3 VMs would require a massive overhaul and the introduction of native libraries to take advantage of OS specific non-blocking system calls like select().  So as you can see upgrading is sounding much better already :).

> I am very much interested in integrating a DS backend to several other
> open source projects like message board, blog, jabber and other
> community type sites which need to manage a directory of users.

As you begin to integrate the server into these projects you will begin to understand the internals somemore.  Also take a look at the JIRA and see if there are any areas that interest you.  Perhaps as an exercise you might want to give a bug or two a shot.  We're all here to assist you or answer your questions in case you need a hand.

Cheers,
Alex 

Re: What can I do?

[Brennan Stehling <of...@gmail.com>]

I just browsed JIRA briefly and saw it is pretty sparse of anything to
work on just now.  Perhaps you could load it up with some tasks you
feel I could handle.  I will pull this down on my iBook at home and
get it to compile.  I have a personal license for IDEA and will use
that to do any work on the codebase.

-- 
Brennan Stehling
 + http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/

Re: What can I do?

[Brennan Stehling <of...@gmail.com>]

> Testing on all these platforms is something that we would like to do.  Perhaps you could for now look into using the server, evaluating it on these platforms.  If you can give us feedback and bug reports that would be excellent.  Do you have any experience with LDAP/Kerberos/DNS/DHCP?
> 

I use to manage iPlanet LDAP servers for a big corporation, including
setting up replication processes.  I also run DNS servers.  As for
DHCP, I once set it up to run off FreeBSD but that was a long time
ago.  It was not exactly rocket science though.  I have had limited
experience with Kerberos, but I have done a good deal with OpenSSL and
OpenSSH so the concepts are familiar.

> 
> Sorry no.  It's not very feasible to write a stateful protocol server without the non-blocking IO constructs (Selectors) in NIO.  Really without JDK 1.4 this project would not exit.  > 

I understand about NIO.  My concern is that FreeBSD only had a Java
1.3.1 release as binary from the FreeBSD Foundation with 1.4 lagging a
bit.  And then there was this licencing issue from Sun that came up. 
So my testing may be limited to MacOS X and Windows 2000 & XP for now.
 This project alone should raise the priority to get Java on FreeBSD
up to date.  I guess the main problem is they need to get the pthreads
library overhauled to better handle Java and Mono threading.

I will browse JIRA and claim an issue once I have a moment after hours.

Thanks Alex!  And contact me in case I lose track of this project.  I
may need a reminder.

-- 
Brennan Stehling
 + http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/