Re: network://

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 18:27, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 18:35 -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 18:14, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > > Hi
> > > 
> > > We are planning, in gnome-network, to do some Zeroconf (aka RendezVous)
> > > support. One of the things we are thinking is to have some special
> > > folders in network:// that allow the user to view the autodetected
> > > services for different protocols.
> > 
> > Rock!
> > 
> > Question: are you planning on writing custom ZC code for GNOME, or using
> > an existing library (or set of libraries) ? 
> >
> yes, the plan is to provide a set of classes in a libgnetwork library,
> so that other GNOME apps can use it. We are right now waiting on
> approval from gmdns author to integrate it in our libgnetwork. (gmdns is
> in GNOME CVS).

*rushes off to look at gmdns*

The docs are rather lacking, and a quick (i.e., < 5 minutes) perusal of
the code didn't answer: is this only a resolver?  It looks as tho it has
some service registration code, but I'm not quite sure what it's doing
(I'm not too familiar with the glib api, sadly).

If it is a server, then does this mean that if a GNOME app using this
library is advertising a service, no non-GNOME app can also run an MDNS
advertised service?  I would have thought the system would need a single
centralized MDNS daemon for responding, with a "standardized" API.  I'm
not all that up-to-date on multicast networking, tho.  (That being a
reason I haven't yet got much past the research phase.  ;-)


> >  Are we talking SLP, MDNS,
> > etc?
> >
> first, mdns, since we've got an implementation, which works. Then, SLP,
> etc, yeah

Righty.  I'll admit to not having bothered to research this, but is UPnP
support possible?  Or even needed?  Assuming a largely MS based network,
neither MDNS nor SLP may be of much help.

> 
> >   What kind of integration, if any, with system installed MDNS (if
> > using MDNS) responders and resolvers is planned?
> > 
> we're not clear yet on all the issue, so any suggestion would be really
> helpful. What do you have in mind?

My plans where mostly along the lines of taking tmdns or another such
server, finishing it off, and doing some good, in-depth documenting of
the APIs.  Then just basically evangelize enough to get all the major
distros to pick it up, and common server/user apps to use the service.

If the gmdns approach works, tho, I'm all for it.  Especially if the
code is usable, or easily modified to be usable, outside of GNOME. 
(i.e., get apache, cups, and so on to register services.)


> 
> cheers
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.