Re: NM dialup API

["Tambet Ingo" <tambet gmail com>]

Hey,

On 4/19/07, Will Stephenson <wstephenson kde org> wrote:
> 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.

There's no dialup API in the trunk because there will be none. Just as
there's common API for wired and wireless devices, a dialup device
will be just another device with exactly the same API and semantics as
every other device type. A dialup device is actually very similar to
wireless: both need a special setup phase (configuration of the
device, connection, and authentication). As a result of dialup device
activation, just like of any other device type, is a working network
connection. There's no reason to duplicate all the API we currently
have for wired and wireless devices (get devices, get device
properties, activate, activation stages, etc...) for dialup devices.
No reason to confuse the public API consumers and have different NM
states for "connected using wired or wireless" and "connected using a
dialup device".

For configuration (of all device types, including dialup) see
http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManagerConfiguration

The exact list of setting types is not spec'ed out yet.

<snip>
> 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'.

The VPN API hasn't changed since NM has been in poor state for long
enough and we just haven't had enough resources. The same
configuration framework should be used for VPN, and it should have
it's own list/properties/status/activate/deactivate interfaces.

Tambet