[phact0rial@xxxxxxx: Re: Arabization]

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org>]

I received thie email and thought I might fwd it to the 'developer' list.
All comments welcome.

----- Forwarded message from Phactorial - <phact0rial at xxxxxx> -----

X-Originating-IP: [212.138.47.13]
From: "Phactorial -" <phact0rial at xxxxxxxx>
To: elzubeir at xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Arabization
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 08 Jun 2002 20:24:58.0229 (UTC) FILETIME=[8F04BA50:01C20F2A]



Well, I just looked at Akka, and porting should hopefully be a very trivial 
proposition. The time this will take is currently not known as I am 
reorginizing some of the code base.  I am
also interested in joining the ArabEyes project and should've hopefully sent 
a request by the time this e-mail has arrived.

I just need your (and the other developer's) consent on the following:

 - I have switched the "CHANGES" style into a more unified and detailed 
format. This will allow us to work (or atleast allow me) much more 
efficiently. Could the developers adopt this as their format as well?

     Format:
       ----------------------------------------------------
        <DATE>
       ----------------------------------------------------
        <file relative to current directory>
           <developer name>: <changes>


 - I would like to ask all the Akka developers to heavily comment system 
architecture specific conventions, especially ioctl's. I will be doing this 
for all the calls in the 1.0 release, this is just a (very good) suggestion 
for future development.

     Example:
       ioctl(i,TIOCSCTTY,&tty);    /* FreeBSD: become controlling tty */

   This should really ease the job of porting Akka to yet other system 
architectures (and will even attract other programmers who see this as a 
perfect oppertunity to recieve good criticism for a very straight forward 
job)


 - All error checking for system calls should print out the representation 
of the errno value. I will be changing all error checking messages for the 
1.0 release to perror(). Can you warn the other developers to do this as 
well (in future development)? This allows for much more verbose messaging 
for potentially confused end-users. Can I also take out some generally 
trivial function calls to reduce the number of library dependencies (the 
amount of library dependencies was made very obvious during compilation)? Do 
you really need those glib routines, libc provides sufficient alternatives.


 - Use unified coding styles as to make the Akka code look perty (ex: your 
FreeBSD code compared to Chahine's. I will be switching your coding style to 
    blend with Chahine's, is that alright with you? Not that his coding 
style is     very legible :P). I will also be changing the commenting style 
for full ANSI     compatibility.


 - The FreeBSD port will take some more time due to my efforts in the 
above. I will be making the above changes to the 1.0 codebase and foward 
copies to the    developers so they will integrate any of their new code 
into a hopefully much more efficient floor to stand on. You should recieve 
the new beautified copy soon.


 - Can we work out a time where I can speak to the developers and (or) 
yourself through IRC? I will try to hang around #arabeyes at opennetworks 
when possible. There are some very integral questions I would like answered 
regarding Akka...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

With this e-mail I have attached my current development snapshot of Akka. 
Please read the changes I have made and will do from the CHANGES file. Never 
the less, I think there are some major bugs in there, so an upload now is 
optional till my FreeBSD port is complete. That IRC discussion is critical 
as well to fix some possible security holes.


BTW: I am interested in joining ArabEyes. I would appreciate if you would 
contact an ArabEyes core member (or whom ever the "authority" is). I have 
sent an e-mail to contact at arabeyes dot org, but due to a pathetically crappy 
internet connection, I was crippled from doing so.


Best regards,
 Phactorial
 [kerneled]: http://www.kerneled.com

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
| Mohammed Elzubeir    | Visit us at:                 |
|                      |  http://www.arabeyes.org/    |
| Arabeyes Project     | Homepage:                    |
| Unix the 'right' way |  http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/|
-------------------------------------------------------