GSoC proposal idea: extending truss Netlink decoding (generic netlink support)

*Hello,*

I recently submitted* PR #1950* which adds basic Netlink message decoding
support to *truss(1)* by parsing *struct nlmsghdr* and iterating through
Netlink messages. The goal is to make debugging tools that use Netlink much
easier.

Some feedback on the PR mentioned that this could be extended further,
especially for subsystems like pf which make use of generic Netlink
messages.

I’m considering a GSoC proposal building on this work. The rough idea would
be to extend the current implementation to:

   -

   add decoding for generic Netlink
   -

   implement attribute parsing for Netlink payloads
   -

   add infrastructure in libsysdecode for family-specific decoders
   -

   potentially add decoding for specific families (eg. pf)

Would this be a reasonable direction for a GSoC project?

I would appreciate any feedback, pointers, or mentorship from anyone
interested in this area.

For reference, the PR is here:

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/pull/1950


*Best Regards,*
*Ishan Agrawal*
🔗 *GitHub: *https://github.com/ishan0803
💼* LinkedIn: *https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishan-agrawal0803/