Re: [PATCH] Avahi support for gnome-games

[Callum McKenzie <callum spooky-possum org>]

On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 14:13 +0100, Daniel S. Haischt wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I did a patch which introduces Avahi support for
> gnome-games. That way you would be able to support
> any of the available Zeroconf implementations.
> 
Could you please place the patch in bugzilla. I'm very interested in
Avahi support, but it will have to wait for the next release cycle (only
about a month). At the moment people who want Avahi support have to rely
on Avahi emulation of libhowl's API. I'm not actually sure this works,
but I have been informed that in theory it should.

> Tho, there are a few things, which are look strange to
> me:
> 
>   a) why are you prepending the server port (26479)
>      to the service name? Zeroconf should be able
>      to work that out for you.
> 
>   b) Why is the user allowed to choose the service name?
>      What happens if she starts Gnibbles and Reversi, both
>      with the same Zerocnf service name?
> 
>   c) Wouldn't it be better to force a particular Zeroconf
>      service name like...
> 
>      _gnibbles._gnomegames._udp
>      _iagno._gnomegames._udp
> 
The quick answer to these questions is it was what the author of the
code (Andreas Røsdal - I don't think he's subscribed to this list)
thought was best. Changing names is a little tricky since we want some
sort of backwards compatibility. However, I am definitely open to
suggestions and arguments about what is best since the networking code
needs to be revisited soon to make it both more usable and secure. 

 - Callum