Main Inclusion Report for librelp

Requirements

1. Availability: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libr/librelp; available for all supported architectures

2. Rationale:

   • Build dependency of rsyslog -- see MainInclusionReport/rsyslog for more context on this library. librelp was created in part to serve rsyslog's needs.

3. Security:

   • CVE entries: None, but see rsyslog's CVEs

   • Secunia history: ...

   • Any binaries running as root or suid/sgid ? Any daemons ? No, just a library
   • Network activity: does it open any port ? Does it handle incoming network data ? Yes, very much so. Handles incoming data on a given port or writes data to a port.

   • Does it directly (not through a library) process binary (video, audio, etc) or structured (PDF, etc) data ? Structured data, yes, but in its own format: http://www.librelp.com/relp.html

   • Any source code review performed ? Not by me, mterry
   • Will not be enabled by default. This library is an optional part of rsyslog, pulled in by rsyslog-relp.

4. Quality assurance:

   • In what situations does the package not work out of the box without configuration ? None that I know of
   • Does the package ask any debconf questions higher than priority 'medium' ? No

   • Debian bugs: None!

   • Maintenance in Debian is calm. Just basic packaging of upstream releases.

   • Upstream is calm. Very infrequent releases (like, a couple a year)

   • Upstream bug tracker: None?! Presumably one could use rsyslog's tracker. Still, it's a bit odd. There is a mailing list and forums, both with next-to-no traffic.

   • Hardware: Does this package deal with hardware and if so how exotic is it ? Doesn't deal with hardware.
   • Is there a test suite in the upstream source or packaging ? Is it enabled to run in the build ? No test suite.

5. UI standards:

   • User-visible strings are internationalized using standard gettext system ? No.
   • Package with translatable strings builds a PO template during package build ? N/A
   • End-user applications ship a desktop file ? No, not an end-user app

6. Standards compliance:

   • FHS, Debian Policy compliance ? Yes, in a trivial way. Just puts a library in /usr/lib.

   • Packaging system (debhelper/cdbs/dbs) ? Patch system ? Any packaging oddities ? Debhelper, but no patch system. Very simple packaging.

7. Dependencies:

   • librelp0: libc6 (>= 2.4)

   • librelp-dev: librelp0 (= 0.1.3-1)
   • Are these all in main ? Yeah, no problems there, very self-contained.

8. Maintenance:

   • How much maintenance is this package likely to need ? Not much, a simple package, with no foreseeable Ubuntu special sauce
   • Who is responsible for monitoring the quality of this package and fixing its bugs ? Are they Ubuntu or Debian developers ? Debian: Michael Biebl. Same maintainer as rsyslog.

9. Background information:

   • The Description from debian/control:

     Description: Reliable Event Logging Protocol (RELP) library
      RELP provides reliable event logging over the network.
      .
      RELP (and hence) librelp assures that no message is lost, not even when
      connections break and a peer becomes unavailable. The current version of
      RELP has a minimal window of opportunity for message duplication after a
      session has been broken due to network problems. In this case, a few messages
      may be duplicated (a problem that also exists with plain tcp syslog). Future
      versions of RELP will address this shortcoming.
      .
      Please note that RELP is a general-purpose, extensible logging protocol. Even
      though it was designed to solve the urgent need of rsyslog-to-rsyslog
      communication, RELP supports many more applications. Extensible command verbs
      provide ample opportunity to extend the protocol without affecting existing
      applications.

   • What do upstream call this software ? Has it had different names in the past ? No different names, just 'librelp'.

10. Internationalization:

    • Are graphical applications translatable? Do they support gettext? Nope.

Reviewers

MIR bug: https://launchpad.net/bugs/388606

Report author: mterry