Re: Question about draft-ietf-hubmib-rfc3636bis

["Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn@mindspring.com>]

Hi -

> From: "C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>
> To: "Mreview (E-mail)" <mreview@ops.ietf.org>
> Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 9:20 PM
> Subject: Question about draft-ietf-hubmib-rfc3636bis
...
> There is, however, a potential backward compatibility issue in
> moving the existing OBJECT-IDENTITY definitions out of the MAU-MIB,
> namely that it would break any MIB modules that happened to import
> those definitions from the MAU-MIB.  I suggested to the author to
> turn the existing definitions as OBJECT IDENTIFIER assignments (as
> permitted by RFC 2578 Section 3.6) so that they could continue to be
> imported from the MAU-MIB.  That suggestion has, however, met with
> some resistance:  it causes lots of smilint warnings, assuming that
> default settings are used, and no one has been able to find any
> example of a MIB module that imports one of the definitions in
> question (for sure no IETF standard MIB module does so).
>
> What would you other MIB Doctors advise in this case?
...

Knowing how one tool works, I'd suggest trying to move all the
relevant existing OBJECT-IDENTITY definitions to the new
module, and then use IMPORTS to ensure that the definitions are
available in the updated version of the MAU-MIB.   This would
need to be tested with popular tools; whether it will work will
depend on just how the implementors read the first paragraph
of RFC 2578 section 3.2, and the third and fourth paragraphs
of section 10.  It will hinge on how much the tools care about
the distinction between the places where an IS_DEFINED()
predicate would be true for a symbol, and where the definition
actually resides.

The minimal test requires three modules:
    module A defines X
    module B imports X from A
    module C imports X from B

If X can actually be used in C, we have a potential solution.

Randy