Re: Question about draft-ietf-hubmib-rfc3636bis

["David T. Perkins" <dperkins@dsperkins.com>]

HI,

The specified references are pretty clear to me that
on the following....
> The minimal test requires three modules:
>     module A defines X
>     module B imports X from A
>     module C imports X from B
That the imports of X in C "from B" is illegal. To
make it legal would require the change of "from B"
to be "from A".

Regards,
/david t. perkins

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Randy Presuhn wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
> 
>