[Ns-developers] ns-3.4 action plan

[Mathieu Lacage]

On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 17:09 +0000, Gustavo Carneiro wrote:
> 2009/2/3 Tom Henderson <tomh at tomh.org>
> 
> > Raj Bhattacharjea wrote:
> >
> >
> >> ----Object Naming System----
> >> The names discussion has wound down, and Craig's repository is
> >> undergoing testing for merge within a few days.
> >>
> >
> > There have been two changes to the above repository recently, based on some
> > discussion I had with Craig.  The first is to allow the "/Names/" prefix to
> > be omitted in most places, to improve readability.
> >
> > i.e. this used to be the required syntax:
> >  Names::Add ("/Names/server", n.Get (1));
> >
> > but this is also equivalent now:
> >  Names::Add ("server", n.Get (1));
> >
> > The only place you cannot use this shortcut is in the Config commands,
> > because that system always expects a fully qualified path name:
> >
> >  Config::Set ("/Names/server/eth0/Mtu", UintegerValue (1234));
> >
> >
> > The second change is to allow objects to be renamed:
> >
> >  Names::Rename ("node0", "access-point");
> >
> > Rename() will facilitate future auto-naming of objects.  In particular, if
> > helper classes are configured to name objects automatically (as I've
> > suggested before), there may be a desire to replace an auto-generated name
> > with a more meaningful name.
> >
> > I think that the above is ready for merge.  I think it would be nice if we
> > could configure the helpers to optionally add names to certain objects
> > (particularly devices), such as a convention that all Csma NetDevices
> > automatically end up with names like "eth0", "eth1". Attached is the start
> > of a patch along these lines.  I think that the auto-naming can be built on
> > top of what Craig already has, in the helper classes, so I do not want to
> > suggest holding the merge of what is already there to work on autonaming-- I
> > am just bringing it up as food for thought.
> 
> 
> But... NetDevices already have names, and for instance CsmaNetDevice names
> are already eth0, eth1, ... by default (thanks to me).  If we get two
> netdevice names, one in "Names" and one in the netdevice itself, it will be
> confusing (as much as separate L3/L2 netdefive indexes are confusing now).
> I prefer to keep the existing API of NetDevice::GetName (), for the sake of
> convenience and API stability, but I am ok if NetDevice::GetName () is
> implemented to fetch the name from the Names list, just as long as we stick
> to the Don't Repeat Yourself principle.

The last time we talked about this, I believe that the agreement was to
remove that method together with Channel::GetName.

Mathieu

>