[Babel-users] babel in vyos

[David Lamparter]

On Fri, Apr 28, 2023 at 12:58:40PM +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> > Out of interest: Is there a reason why FRR doesn't just use babeld, but
> > something of its own?
[...]
> FRR's code is derived from a port of a very old version of babeld to
> Quagga, which was done by Matthieu Boutier and myself.  Paul Jackma (the
> maintainer who ended up killing Quagga) invented a lot of spurious reasons
> not to merge our code into Quagga.  When FRR was forked from Quagga,
> Donald Sharp did a lot of good work to clean up and merge Matthieu's code.
> 
> Unfortunately, the FRR folks never got around to updating FRR's Babel code
> to either merge a more recent version of babeld or do their own updates
> with what we've learned since then.  I'm sure they'd accept a patch, but
> I'm not sure I can do the work myself (merging changes is a dull and
> error-prone job, it requires a kind of engineering discipline that
> I simply don't have).

Good summary, thanks Juliusz!

Unfortunately there just doesn't seem to be enough interest from the FRR
community;  it's kinda understandable considering FRR has gotten rather
datacenter heavy.  While we certainly get some questions and issues
regarding BABEL on FRR, there's noone putting effort into development /
maintenance.

Honestly I'm really unsure where to go with FRR's copy of babeld.  I
don't like carrying around a version that people can (and will)
mistakenly use without being aware of how outdated it is.  I did think
about putting in the effort of "re-porting" current babeld, but that's
not very helpful if noone maintains it afterwards.

If someone is interested (and can spare some of that "engineering
discipline" you mention, Juliusz - it is a very limited resource...),
I'd be happy to do that "re-port", I can probably do it much faster than
most other people.  Just without anyone to tend to it afterwards I'd
feel like I'd just be wasting the effort :(.

FWIW, as much as it pains me, maybe we need to remove FRR's babeld.  At
some point it just becomes harmful, and I fear we may already have
passed that point.  If there is indeed consensus in that regard, I'll
regretfully volunteer to take the executioner's job and axe it out :(

Sigh...


equi