Docs/Specs

[Gerald Carter]

"Christopher R. Hertel" wrote:
> 
> The problem is that Samba itself is the result of 
> both the docs you've already found and 
> reverse-engineering work.  That means that we don't
> always know why the protocol does what it does, and
> we also have a moving target.  That's tough to document.
> 
> Best bet is to ask good technical questions.

I think there are also other issues here besides ones 
relating to protocols.  For example,

* Samba locking semantincs
* the smb.conf parsing routines (and adding parameters)
* the RPC marshalling/unmarshalling routines
* the various TDB's
* etc...

These are the internal issues I was thinking of 
in my first reply.  The HEAD branch is around 200 KLOC
now.  Quite a large project to grab a hold of.

I think it is most helpful to concentrate on a small area
and use a symbolic debugger to step through the code.
That has helped me the most.  Then as you become more
familar with the internal data structures, the code becomes
more readable.

And I would encourage more comments in the code as well.
:-)






Cheers, jerry
----------------------------------------------------------------------
   /\  Gerald (Jerry) Carter                     Professional Services
 \/    http://www.valinux.com  VA Linux Systems    gcarter at valinux.com
       http://www.samba.org       SAMBA Team           jerry at samba.org
       http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~cartegw

       "...a hundred billion castaways looking for a home."
                                - Sting "Message in a Bottle" ( 1979 )