Re: Joining the project

Thanks for your interest in incron. There is a very important (and very
strongly requested by users) feature which you can help to design and/or
implement: recursive monitoring. Many people ask for it day-by-day. I
created a few implementations but none of them worked properly. The idea
is the following:

- Rules are created for a subtree (not a single file or directory), eg.
for /home/myname.
- It means incron creates a watch for all directories under the subtree.
- If a directory is created inside this subtree it is included into the
monitored set.
- The same applies for other operations (deleting, moving) too.
- Each user may have more than one rules for the same subtree or for
parts of it (eg. multiple rules for /var/log or one rule for /var/log
and another rules for /var/log/apache2, /var/log/mysql...).
- Recursive monitoring will be indicated by a specific IN_* flag (this
will switch to the recursive behavior).
- Everything described here must first apply for inotify-cxx and then
for incron (the second step is much simplier then the first one).

If you would like to help with implementing this it will be very nice.
My current recommendation is the following:

1. Look at the web page http://inotify.aiken.cz and read the "Concepts
of recursive monitoring" (this is basically the same as described above
but using other words) and "Proposed incrontab format" articles at the
"What's new" page.
2. Download the current incron sources and inspect how it is
implemented. The API is also described there.
3. I will search for my historical attempts to implement recursive
monitoring. If successful, I will upload them into the SVN repository
(svn://svn.aiken.cz/public/) and send you a notification.

Then we can debate about the design and implementation. More heads give
more knowledge ;-)

Lukas

> I used incron for the first time this last week and I thought it was a
> great tool. I'm a college student, and I've been wanting to start
> contributing to the open source community. Would there be anything I
> could do for incron? I'm a sophmore, with a heavy linux
> administrative background, limited real world programming experience.
> I've waded into the waters of C/C++ but haven't really gone in too
> deep. I'd love to work on small tasks, whatever I could do to
> contribute...
>
> let me know,
>
> Peter
Received on Tue Jun 05 2012 - 22:14:21 CEST