Re: Moving to bonjour over howl

[Jakub Stachowski <qbast go2 pl>]

Dnia czwartek, 15 września 2005 16:55, Bastien Nocera napisał:
> On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 10:50 -0400, JP Rosevear wrote:
> > On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 16:06 +0200, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> > > Le jeudi 15 septembre 2005 à 09:59 -0400, JP Rosevear a écrit :
> > > > On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 15:37 +0200, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> > > > > Le jeudi 15 septembre 2005 à 14:30 +0100, Bastien Nocera a écrit :
> > > > > > On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 09:18 -0400, JP Rosevear wrote:
> > > > > > > Is there any reason not to prefer bonjour over howl now?  Apple
> > > > > > > has re-licensed the client portions of the library under BSD
> > > > > > > like howl and almost certainly bonjour will be better tested.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Initial patches that support both from hpj:
> > > > > > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=312953
> > > > > > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311882
> > > > > >


It is probably quite unusual for KDE developer to appear on GNOME mailing 
list :-) , but as guy behind Zeroconf in kde i should be best one to answer 
any questions related to it.


> > > > > > Is there any reasons to prefer Apple's Bonjour over Howl? The
> > > > > > license problems are the same in both implementations, and we can
> > > > > > at least have some influence on Howl. See how well Apple works
> > > > > > with the KDE community. Not really encouraging.

Really, I don't have too many complaints about Apple's cooperation on 
zeroconf. If you meant big KHTML/WebCore flamewar then it is resolved too.

> > > > >
> > > > > I thought the plan was to use Avahi.
> > > >
> > > > I wasn't aware this was a definite thing.
> > >
> > > I don't think it was. But until recently, all other zeroconf
> > > implementation had licensing issue except Avahi.
> > >
> > > > > It would be very nice to use the same implementation as KDE,
> > > > > otherwise you end up with two implementation of Zeroconf on your
> > > > > system :(
> > > >
> > > > The internal KDE guys here are still preferring bonjour when I asked
> > > > them, although it does appear that avahi support is available
> > > > upstream in KDE.
> > >
> > > Well, unless I'm mistaken, KDE is using mDNSResponder by default.
> >
> > Yes, thats bonjour afaik.

By default, yes. But because KDE uses wrapper library (see  
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/cvs-api/kdelibs-apidocs/dnssd/html/annotated.html ) 
creating alternative implementation was not a problem (see 
http://wiki.kdenews.org/tiki-index.php?page=Zeroconf+in+KDE). 
Everything you need to do is replace libkdnssd.so.1 and that's it - no changes 
in applications or even recompilation is required.

On the other hand you don't get avahi backend with kdelibs tarball - as it  
was written after feature freeze. Adding it after freeze for 3.5 also makes 
no sense - it is last in 3.x series and for KDE4 service discovery will be 
heavily redesigned (see 
http://websvn.kde.org/branches/work/kdnssd/multiengine/kdelibs/srvdisco/IDEAS?rev=460919&view=markup )


>
> Or Howl. The binaries have the same name, and the API and code isn't
> that far off either.

Howl is not supported and probably won't be. It is just fork of old Apple's 
mdnsd with custom client library slapped on top of it.

The bottom line is that whichever daemon (bonjour or avahi) will be picked for 
GNOME it will only make cooperation with KDE easier then it is now. 



>
> ---
> Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>
> "I want no epitaphs of profound history and all that type of thing. I
> contributed. I would hope they would say that, and I would hope somebody
> liked me." - Brian Clough, on being remembered.
>
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