rpsl and bird

[Nick Hilliard]

On 22/04/2011 07:43, Andy Linton wrote:
> If I want to use rpsl and bird (http://bird.network.cz/) to implement a
> router server/refelector what support is there? rtconfig which I've uses
> extensively in the past is Cisco/Juniper specific.
>
> So any tools to convert things to the bird config etc?

not natively, no.  Problem is that:

1. the design methodology behind rtconfig is too broken for me and 
basically anyone else to want to port it to other BGP engine configuration 
systems, which I would be tempted to fix except that:

2. the rpsl back-end library is too difficult to work with from the point 
of view of creating, say, perl / ruby / python bindings and then creating a 
front-end system which was delivered using a templating engine, which I 
would be tempted to fix except:

3. the RPSL language specification is too complicated to justify the effort 
in building a completely new parser from scratch, which would then make it 
worth peoples' time building a new back-end library and then creating 
scripting language binding libs.

There are plans to sit down and discuss what can be done about this at the 
next RIPE meeting in a couple of weeks time.

In the meantime, if you want to hack bird support into rtconfig, I wouldn't 
see any problems merging the code back into the irrtoolset distribution.

Nick