Drat! (2) (Re: Todo list -- POP3 retriever)

[Chris Gonnerman <chris gonnerman usa net>]

Well, I am going to back down on this.  My POP3 downloader code (using
gdk_input_add() chained to a finite-state machine) would be very good at
everything currently being discussed... progress updating, concurrent
downloading, even added SMTP support... but it has the fatal flaw Peter
mentioned, i.e. it can block for unknown periods of time starting a download
due to the gethostbyname() and connect() calls.

Gah.

The only thing I can think of that would save my code is running calls to the
launch_next_job() code in a separate thread; but that fails at avoiding
threading altogether, which was my goal.  Contrary to popular belief, GNOME
does NOT require threading (proved by the system I am on now, SuSE 5.2/Linux
2.0.35/libc5 with October GNOME on it).

Why try to avoid threading?  Because I am not the only poor sucker with a
non-glibc system who doesn't want to screw with it (because it works).

I suppose I could use #ifdefs and have the launch either in a thread or inline;
blocking would only occur on libc5 systems then.

Hmm...