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

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* Greg Stein (gstein lyra org) wrote at 19:41 on 31/08/00:
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2000 at 02:48:48AM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > Greg Stein <gstein lyra org> writes:
> >...
> > > > So I think we would need to see some major concrete benefits to
> > > > using Neon instead of implementing missing functionality directly in
> > > > order to switch.
> > > 
> > > Concrete benefits? Sure. Areas where gnome-vfs (http/dav) is lacking:
> > 
> > I'll comment first that I don't know what many of the below things
> > are, so I don't know how they benefit the user.
> 
> No problem. We'll wait for Ian.
> 
> > > *) Digest authentication
> > > *) HTTP/1.1 support: chunked transfer encoding, persistent connections
> > >  [ note the above two are *required* by RFC 2518 (WebDAV) ]
> > 
> > Required of the client or required of the server? If the former, we
> > are in trouble.
> 
> Both.
> 
> Inside secret: it is an RFC requirement -- there is nothing inherent in DAV
> that requires either. Requiring digest promotes better security; requiring
> HTTP/1.1 promotes better infrastructure.
> 
> [ for example: mod_dav does not enforce either of these. however, an admin
>   is completely justified to enable/enforce them in their server config ]
> 
> > > *) SSL support
> > 
> > We're waiting on the legal issues (RSA patent deathwatch)
> 
> Oh. Right! We're just a few weeks away. :-)
> 
> > > *) proxy support
> > > *) proxy authentication
> > > *) 100-Continue handling
> > > *) bugs due to lack of broad use and young codebase.
> > >    [ for example, the PROPFIND result parser does not distinguish between
> > >      the DAV:getcontenttype and http://example.com/davprops/getcontenttype
> > >      elements. it also does not handle the DAV:status element. ]
> > > *) 301/302 redirect handling
> > > *) extended property (metadata) support: PROPFIND, PROPPATCH
> > > *) DAV lock handling
> > > *) choice of libxml or Expat   [GNOME would just use libxml]
> > 
> > It seems at least some of these things could not be cleanly expressed
> > in the gnome-vfs API.
> 
> Much of it would not necessarily be exposed. I'm not sure if the VFS API
> exposes metadata as a first-class concept on files/dirs. The rest is
> probably internal improvements for efficiency, interoperability, and better
> response to varying server configurations.
> 
> > And I think we do have proxy support, at least I remember Mike Fleming
> > angsting about a proxy-related checkin.
> 
> gnome-http has it. gnome-vfs/modules/http_method.[ch] does not appear to
> have any proxy support. Possibly other vfs modules have proxy support (for
> example, maybe the FTP module).
> 
> > > I am not intending to knock all the great work that has gone into it. But
> > > there is so much more that is possible. And with little development work for
> > > you, too :-)
> > 
> > I would love it if Ian McKeller, who's done most of our WebDAV and
> > http stuff, would comment on this stuff. I don't really know much
> > about it. I'm just semi-rationally afraid of adding mroe dependencies.
> 
> Again: I understand. More dependencies is always a bit nerve wracking :-)
> Maybe I'll just trundle over to the Eazel office and beat you into
> submission... ;-)

I don't think you need to add a dependency to gnome-vfs. It can be distributed
individually. For exampel medusa has its own gnome-vfs module distributed
seperately, and the help component distributes its own gnome-vfs module.

The only problem I see is that you would need a way to 'override' the default
'http' setting (you can run a script during the installation to change the
http method to use libvfs-neon.so instead of libvfs-http.so or whatever).

The point is, this would neatly avoid the neon dependency to gnome-vfs.

> I am interested in Ian's thoughts. Last time we traded emails, the async was
> the big blocker (which appears to have been solved). I forget what some of
> the other issues were.
> 
> [ hmm... I think I even got an email from Ian recently... gotta go check my