Re: [Savannah-dev] debian packaging and protocol thoughts

[Roland Mas]

Loic Dachary (2001-11-14 13:11:20 +0100) :

>       That plan seems safe to me. Of course one could argue that we
> should use some XML bus technology since we're trying to transmit
> messages to/from server and clients. Unless someone masters this
> aspect we are probably going to stick to a hand made communication
> and error handling between the server and the clients.

At this point, I'd like to suggest using an already existing bus
technology.  I am not aware of the existence of any "XML bus", but the
word "bus" you mentioned whispered "CORBA" to me.  Now for some
anti-FUD (it might not be needed, but I've had to fight against fo
much disinforation when I introduced CORBA at work that I prefer not
to take any risks): I've been working with CORBA for one year and a
half, and I can testify it is *not* *at* *all* heavyweight or hard to
program with.  It works, it's lightweight, it's interoperable, it's
cross-language (and cross-architecture and cross-network etc.).  I can
provide help to get the thing started.  This would be in the form of
20-line skeletons of servers and clients (since it's all that it
takes) in both Perl and Python using ORBit, or in help on designing
the interfaces (that's not much harder than an OO model).  I'm told
there are also bindongs for PHP, and there obviously are some for C
and C++.

  "Sticking to hand-made communications and error handling" is a major
commitment, and I would strongly advise against it.  I've been
involved in a few projects where different modules needed to
communicate, and programming the sockets by hand, designing a
protocol, and handling errors is a huge task.

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

La menace de la baffe pèse plus lourd que la baffe elle-même.
  -- in Sri Raoul le petit yogi (Gaudelette)