Welcome Note
Introduction to GNU and the Hurd sent monthly to Help-Hurd@gnu.org.
Two canonical status lists are available from the CVS archive: * [TODO file](http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/~checkout~/hurd/hurd/TODO?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain) - from Hurd repository * [Task file](http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/~checkout~/hurd/hurd/tasks?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain) - from Hurd respository
Related: Known Hurd Limits?,
Seen Hurd?, Who Runs GNU?
---- Here are some notes taken from an [IRC discussion](http://web.walfield.org/~hird/%23hurd-200209027) September 28th, 2002. The part of the log at which I am summarizing starts with ` wolfgang: I once made a list of things that are definitely to be done before a release. want me to write it here? (It's only on paper so far)` This list is intended to apply to "just the CVS of the [Hurd itself](http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/hurd)." It is specifically not intended to apply to GNU/Hurd and definately not Debian GNU/Hurd. * xkb driver for console (for international users) * kbd leds in console (well, in general, Roland's new driver in oskit for that crap) * fixing fakeroot (it's buggy) * fixing tmpfs (it's buggy, Neal says it's Mach's fault) * adding posix shared memory (requires the io\_close call to be implemented) * adding posix file locking (requires the io\_close call to be implemented) * testing * find + various filesystems (are inode numbers for . and .. sane?) * ext2fs with other block sizes than 4096 * --help and --version and --usage in all programs * I have seen ^V in some --help output, might be argp bug * Verify that all options are documented clearly, and that no unimplemented options appear * Is the short and long description in the help output correct? * Is the return value of all programs correct (eg, does main() return a sane value) * Is the suid bit correctly set for all installed programs? * Translators * Does settrans -g work? -fg? * Does fsysopts work? Does setting options with fsysopts work? * Does stat() work on all translated nodes and give proper data? * What about chown, chmod (some translators should pass this through to the underlying node, esp in /dev!) * Does statfs give correct data? * Are all inode numbers and link counts correct? * [one unreadable item on the paper] * We also should have a "make check" test suite. We can add this once Jeff finished his automake patches * pick up the other things * pthread, definitely. Now that we are so close * new console is basically done * needs integration of course * X switching support * there is certainly more to do ... -- This is the wrong place for this but I'll put it here for now. Here's an [email about pthreads direction](http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/hurd-devel/2002q3/000449.html) from hurd-devel mail list. -- [[Main/GrantBow]] - 01 Oct 2002 Wolfgang also created a wonderful list of [Easy tasks](http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/help-hurd/2002-July/006413.html) on July 28, 2002 that I will quote here:
Difficulty Task
0 Check if all programs handle options (at least --help, --version and --usage; don't forget about the shell scripts)
1 Check if all translators handle fsysopts
1 Check if all translators respond to "settrans -g"
1 More tests of this kind
2 Fix those of the above who don't work as intended
2 Document (in doc/hurd.texi) all undocumented programs (translators as well as programs in utils/ and sutils/ and some others)
1 Find a POSIX test suite, run it on GNU/Hurd, report the results
1 Find more useful test suites to run
3 Update INSTALL-cross
2 Check if all the store classes in libstore work (we have many of them, look into the Makefile)
4 Fix those who don't work
2 Document all still undocumented store classes
2 The console is pretty new code, it told me it wants to get tested
Where difficulty 0 means trivial and 4 means tricky; the difficulty has nothing to do with the importance. -- [[Main/GrantBow]] - 11 Oct 2002