You can help

Hello,

People may wonder how they could help the project.

First, let me say that whatever help you provide is welcome: I appreciate every bug report filled, the time someone may take to let me know that they use an appreciate the application as much as a pull request.

Two areas of ExaBGP are currently very much in dire need of attention: the documentation and unit testing.

The wiki is nowhere near what it should be to allow non programmers (or advanced unix administrator) to just pick the application and start to use it.

The documentation does not cover the configuration format, even less the application API, and most advanced users still have to dig into the code to know what options are available or not.

Unit testing is the other one. Two unit testing tools, trying to perform end-to-end tests are used in ExaBGP ( selfcheck and runtest ), you can find how they work looking at the travis-ci file. However the 'usual' unitesting functions have been left to rot and are in dire need of tender loving care.

Everyone is welcome to pick any opened issue on github and work on them, even if I have assigned it to myself.

I will gladly provide guidance, and help should you feel like trying to solve bug or implement a new feature. I try to be reactive. You can often find me on IRC ( #exabgp on freenode ) and XMPP ( every of my email address is an account ). Should you feel up to taking the challenge, feel free to drop me a mail so I can make sure your time is used as efficiently as possible. I welcome video conference/chat as it often allows to exchange in minutes what would take much longer by text.

ExaBGP is my brainchild, but I am not a possessive person and should you think some design decision were wrong or in need of addressing, I am not opposed to change anything as long as a positive discussion is taking place and the reason for it can be sustained.

Once a community take place, a more formal 'TODO' list and roadmap for the application should start to emerge, I am looking forward to your contribution to it.

I am currently developing a new configuration format (using the configuration branch), it can be tested using python lib/exabgp/configuration/init.py
I would also appreciate any feedback on the ongoing work. Let it be comment and/or code contribution.

I hope this gave you the will to try to participate to the project.

Sincerely,

Thomas