Once upon a time, far far away, there were the old Bird developers
discussing what direction of route flow shall be called import and
export. They decided to say "import to protocol" and "export to table"
when speaking about a protocol. When speaking about a table, they
spoke about "importing to table" and "exporting to protocol".
The latter terminology was adopted in configuration, then also the
bird CLI in commit ea2ae6dd0 started to use it (in year 2009). Now
it's 2018 and the terminology is the latter. Import is from protocol to
table, export is from table to protocol. Anyway, there was still an
import_control hook which executed right before route export.
One thing is funny. There are two commits in April 1999 with just two
minutes between them. The older announces the final settlement
on config terminology, the newer uses the other definition. Let's see
their commit messages as the git-log tool shows them (the newer first):
commit 9e0e485e50
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:17:59 1999 +0000
Added some new protocol hooks (look at the comments for better explanation):
make_tmp_attrs Convert inline attributes to ea_list
store_tmp_attrs Convert ea_list to inline attributes
import_control Pre-import decisions
commit 5056c559c4
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:15:31 1999 +0000
Changed syntax of attaching filters to protocols to hopefully the final
version:
EXPORT <filter-spec> for outbound routes (i.e., those announced
by BIRD to the rest of the world).
IMPORT <filter-spec> for inbound routes (i.e., those imported
by BIRD from the rest of the world).
where <filter-spec> is one of:
ALL pass all routes
NONE drop all routes
FILTER <name> use named filter
FILTER { <filter> } use explicitly defined filter
For all protocols, the default is IMPORT ALL, EXPORT NONE. This includes
the kernel protocol, so that you need to add EXPORT ALL to get the previous
configuration of kernel syncer (as usually, see doc/bird.conf.example for
a bird.conf example :)).
Let's say RIP to this almost 19-years-old inconsistency. For now, if you
import a route, it is always from protocol to table. If you export a
route, it is always from table to protocol.
And they lived happily ever after.
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