Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus now officially dependent on Ammonite when compiled with --enable-eazel-services

[Greg Stein <gstein lyra org>]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2000 at 02:22:25PM -0700, Mike Fleming wrote:
> Hey Greg--
> 
> Thanks for the info.  Ammonite really does something a little different
> than what you've inferred.  It's sort of a purpose-built component for
> Eazel services, consolidating Eazel Service User login session
> information across applications.  It serves two main functions:
> 
> 1. Mantains a Eazel Service User session state across applications that
> use this.  (Nautilus and its components)
> 2. Tunnel Eazel Service HTTP requests through SSL.  This is mostly
> important for Mozilla embedded in Nautilus, since as of yet we don't
> have a free software solution to SSL inside Mozilla.
> 
> Ammonite is *sort of* a client-side HTTP proxy that has some special
> behaviour for Eazel services.  I should update the README to explain
> better what it does.

Ah. Gotcha... sounds quite reasonable.

Then I might counter with: Ammonite would be a layer on top of Neon to
provide the Eazel Services that you're after.

> As far as WebDAV goes, Nautilus's WebDAV implementation is based on the
> gnome-vfs HTTP module, which currently uses its own HTTP library.

Yah, I know, and I consider it a most unfortunate occurrence. I've posted
here before regarding Neon and the gnome-vfs stuff. The HTTP and DAV code in
gnome-vfs is at least a year behind Neon (auth, proxy, SSL, better DAV
support, etc).

In those previous conversations, the answer was always "but gnome-vfs is
async, so we can't use Neon". Bleh. That is what threads are for (and GNOME
is already defined to be threaded, so this isn't a Bad Thing(tm) to depend
upon).

In fact, the Neon distro includes a threaded, GNOME example.
[ added specifically to address the async "problem" :-) ]

> Neon sounds really interesting, though, and likely something we'll want
> to look at using for some end or another.  I'll take your pointer and
> check it out.  I'm glad that someone's working on a decent free HTTP
> client library.  This has been a huge missing piece.

:-)  I agree wholeheartedly. I'm not the author, but I've been working with
Joe on DAV stuff for almost two years now. He's a great guy and has put
together some good code. That's why I push it so much :-).

I got an email earlier from somebody who looked at Neon after my initial
post. He asked for a better reference to example code. My recommendation is
to look at the cadaver code (http://www.webdav.org/cadaver/) for an example
reference. It exercises pretty much all of Neon.

I'd be happy to answer questions about Neon (or defer to Joe for the tough
ones :-), and about WebDAV in general. I'm signed up on the Nautilus list
specifically to help promote any DAV efforts in the thing :-)

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/