[c-nsp] Changes in defaults...

[Jared Mauch]

On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 09:00:30AM -0400, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
> At 8:08 AM -0400 4/29/05, Rodney Dunn wrote:
> >I know it's sorta a dumb question but it's something I'm
> >trying to move forward.
> >
> >I'd like to see in the Release-notes for an IOS release
> >a section that describes default changes in IOS.
> >
> >Would you find that useful?
> >
> >Sometimes we really need to make changes in defaults to harden
> >the product or simply to make it better. IOS does not have
> >a way to display all the defaults via the CLI unfortunately so
> >some CLI tool is not an option. I'm not interested in discussing
> >that as an issue. I'm simply looking for feedback on how much it
> >would help and if you think it would be useful to document default
> >changes in the Release Notes.
> 
> The various show config commands are essentially a decompiler of data 
> structures, which build a set of configuration language statements 
> that should have produced their states.  I understand that there are 
> size limits to its code when running on the router, which is one 
> reason all defaults don't show. There's also the practical matter 
> that showing defaults could make configuration listings too long to 
> read during operations.
> 
> I've often wondered, however, if the show config code could be ported 
> to a UNIX machine, and that port given switches that enabled listing 
> defaults. The practicality of this, I suppose, depends on how much of 
> the grammar is table-driven, and the relationships of such tables to 
> the release strategy.

	So...

	There is a project underway in Cisco to work on revealing
more defaults.  It won't be "soon", but on the short term horizon
i believe.

	Now, on the release-notes topic..

	Obviously and default changes should be documented, otherwise
I believe that Cisco is being negligent in the documentation of these
changes, but the release-notes are impossible to read in their
current state.  here's my feedback to those groups (should they be
listening):

	Release notes should be short and sweet.  I'm not going to take
the time to read pages that go on forever.  Use the power of the href
link to make the documents valuable.

	eg:

IOS 13.0
  New Features:
    per-ttl rate-limit [link to page documeting it]
    SCCP-SIP translator [link to config guide page]
    HFR-platform support [link to platform reference pages]
  Bug Fixes:
    CSCdj49045 2 Router crashes with printf [link to release note]
    CSCec85601 3 spurious access with tx out aux port [link to release note]
 

	something that makes it short, readable, and ultimately help
with the orginzation of CCO.  There won't be 50 feature pages for
each release a feature shows up in, there will be one with the full
details of that feature, or hardware support.

	This would help with documentation bloat on cisco and ease
things for those that are technically oriented so we can find things
without going to google and typing "site:cisco.com search-criteria"

	- jared

-- 
Jared Mauch  | pgp key available via finger from jared at puck.nether.net
clue++;      | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/  My statements are only mine.