NM dialup API

[Will Stephenson <wstephenson kde org>]

I'm working on the Solid API for network management for KDE 4 and am designing 
the dialup part now.  Since NM is the main backend on KDE's major 
platform, it influences our API design.  There don't seem to be any 
significant changes regarding dialup in SVN trunk yet, so here's my proposal 
for an NM dialup API.

I've tried to make it more object oriented than the existing interface.  The 
design owes a debt to the Telepathy spec.

NetworkManager Dialup spec v.0.0.1

o.f.NetworkManager.DialupManager

Enums: DeviceType { Analog, DSL, ISDN, GSM, EDGE, ... } (I need to check if 
the cellular dialup types really are different to analogue modems).

- ListTypes() -> au
    returns an array of dialup device type enums, eg 
- ListDevices() -> a(su)
    returns an array of (device name, DeviceType)
- ListConnections() -> ao
    returns an array of dbus object paths to configured DialupConnections
- GetParameters() -> a(susv)
    An array of structs containing: 
    a string parameter name
    a bitwise OR of parameter flags (defining if a parameter is required, and 
if it has a default value)
    a string D-Bus type signature
    a variant default value or undefined if none supplied/appropriate
- RequestConnection( a{sv} )  -> o
    request a connection with a valid set of parameters - this must include 
DeviceType.  returns a dbus object path representing the connection, or
    error: InvalidParameters
! signal NewConnection( o )
    signals that a new connection was created.

o.f.NetworkManager.DialupConnection

enum: ConnectionStatus { Disconnected, Connecting, Connecting, 
Disconnecting } - could be finer grained, I need to look at what some dialup 
devices actually do.
enum: StatusReason { BadPassword, NoCarrier, etc }
- Connect ( s: device ) -> nothing
    make the connection to a named device.  Progress is reported via 
StatusChanged
  error: InvalidDeviceType
- Disconnect() -> nothing
- GetSupportedType() -> u:type
- GetCurrentDevice() -> s:currently connected device name, or empty
- GetStatus() -> u:status
! signal StatusChanged( u:ConnectionStatus, u:StatusReason )
    signals a status change on this connection, giving reason.

An extension to NMInfo for dialup connections is forthcoming.

Also, what's the plan regarding the VPN API? Trunk seems mostly the same as 
0.6.x.  I see parallels between dialup and vpn connections that could be 
merged, using distinct dbus interfaces for each but with a 
shared 'ConnectionManager'.

Will