RE: Including libgnetwork in 2.5.0

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> I'm trying to get 
> libgnetwork into 2.5.0. It's a rename/rework of the 
> GTcpSocket library, and is available
> at:
> 
> http://esco.mine.nu/downloads/libgnetwork-0.0.0.tar.gz
> 
> and the 'libgnetwork' module in CVS.

You need to update the README for the new project name, and you should add a
MAINTAINERS file.

Can you explain very simply what it's useful for, and when it is more useful
than the other networky APIs? For instance, it looks like it would be useful
for implementing things like web servers, ssh terminal connections, and
maybe for implementing networking protocols (e.g. ssh, ftp?), on top of TCP.
Compared to libgnetwork, I guess that interprocess communication would be
better done with dbus or CORBA, and reading/writing of file-based
information would be better done with gnome-vfs. 

Are you trying to add this to the GNOME Development Platform, or just to the
GNOME Desktop so that gnome-network can use it?

I like the idea of this API existing, because I tend to work in companies
that constantly reimplement this stuff badly. However, I'm not sure
personally how useful it is to the typical GNOME application.
 
> It's currently broken due to the massive API/code 
> organization changes I spent the last week on, but it does 
> build, and will definately be stable
> (code- and API-wise) enough to use before 2.6.0 (The stuff 
> that's left is filling in the missing pieces, and some thread 
> issues re: closing sockets).
> 
> The pros/cons vs some other networking libs:
> 
> GNet:

GNet == libgnetwork, right?

>     + Uses GObject.
>     + Multi-threaded.
>     + Automatic proxy traversal (nearly transparent to apps).
>     + Easily extensible.
>     + GNUTLS *or* OpenSSL.
>     - Doesn't handle URIs or UDP (yet).
>     - Doesn't support UDP or Unix sockets (yet).

Are these "yet" items planned for GNOME 2.6, or later? API/ABI freeze is on
December 8th, by the way:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.5/


> Link:
>     + Not private to ORBit :-).
>     + More detailed signals and error reporting.
>     + Automatic proxy traversal (nearly transparent to apps).
>     + DNS API (it's sexy :-)).
>     + GNUTLS *or* OpenSSL.
>     - Doesn't support UDP or Unix sockets (yet).

Linc has been removed from the public API of the Development Platform, so
it's no longer really relevant.
 
> GTcpSocket:
>     + Much cleaner object hierarchy & signals (using
>       GNetwork{Connection,Server}Iface).

This seems to be part of libgnetwork now anyway.
 
> GnomeVFS:
>     + GObject.
>     + (Eventually) more complete SSL support (X509 certificate
>       verification, for example).
>     + Non-HTTP Proxy support: currently supports HTTP, SOCKS4, and
>       SOCKS5 (HTTPS/SSL & FTP are planned).

Non-HTTP: HTTP?

Murray Cumming
www.murrayc.com
murrayc usa net