netfilter.org releases (almost), update on my netfilter involvement

It's been terrible to be away from netfilter development for about two months now. This really has to change, I have to cut down on other stuff if I don't want to loose track completely.

Anyway, I finally did what I wanted to do at least for many weeks: To push new releases of libnfnetlink, libnetfilter_log, libnetfilter_queue, libnetfilter_conntrack and conntrack. The files are available from their usual location. Haven't been in the mood to write changelogs yet, so if you're really interested in them, you'll have to wait for a bit more.

The main architectural change is that the internal api between libnfnetlink and libnetfilter_* has changed, e.g. caller-allocated structures are now callee-allocated. Apart from that, a very important bugfix was made in libnfnetlink, one that actually affects future-compatibility of the kernel/userspace interface.

For anything else, it's mainly a maintenance release.

libnetfilter_queue doesn't yet contain the bits required for the 'upcoming' libnetfilter_cthelper (userspace helpers), because I felt pushing that code without having the rest of the infrastructure plus some test cases running isn't really worth it.

So please include in your prayers that there are not too many gpl violations during the next couple of weeks, that I finally get hold of that stupid PPTP problem that is bugging me for many weeks. If that happens, I think I'll be back to netfilter stuff early next week after returning from the Barcelona GPLv3 event.

Not sure whether I mentioned it already: I'm actually skipping OLS (and kernel summit) this year in order to gain some time. Meeting folks and attending talks is a lot of fun, but it also (including the travel overhead, jetlag, drinking, etc.) eats a lot of time. So I'll actually take my long-announced pkttables holidays when the rest of the Linux kernel developers are in Ottawa. For those not familiar with the term: The idea is to 'go on holidays' (i.e. abandon anything else like reading emails, etc) and stay focused working on netfilter stuff for at least one week in order to finally see the ideas so far known as pkttables to finally materialize in one way or the other.

Meanwhile, I have to extend my deepest thanks to Patrick McHardy, and all the work he's been putting into netfilter maintenance over the last year or so.