Re: JAVA Support

I cc'ed Tom Lockhart because he *used* to be core, and I know where  
he works.  No response expected.

On Sep 28, 2006, at 2:11 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:

>> f) SASL support is available in current Java as well as C.
>> SASL libraries are included (or at least loadable) on MacOS,
>> Solaris 10+, and Linux.  (I don't do windows, so I can't say
>> there.)  While it has a reputation for complexity, that
>> complexity is in building the libraries, not in using them.
>>
>> It can be used to provide most (all?) of the functionality
>> now provided by the assortment of existing mechanisms.
>
> Well, it's still a complexity you need to deal with. Plus, just  
> Java and
> C is far from enough, if you are intending to suggest we replace  
> some of
> what we have now with it (like passwords and other such things). For
> example, you need things like perl, python, ruby, C#, etc etc. not  
> sure
> how many of those would be fine with a C wrapper, I know for a fact  
> that
> C# (or other .net languages) wouldn't, they need it natively.

OK, point taken.  OTOH how many of those have GSSAPI support?  I  
don't know, but I'd guess that only going as far as GSSAPI gets you  
C# (and .net), and Java of course.  Perl probably isn't a big deal  
just using glue for either SASL or GSSAPI.  Python and Ruby I don't  
know.

> There also used to be some bad portability issues wrt at least some of
> the SASL libraries (if there is more than one).

There's more than one, since the Java one is different from Cyrus.   
I've seen references to others, but I think they qualify as  
"obscure".  The Sun one is related to Cyrus.

> I know I tried to make
> it work on win32 once and failed miserably. (Then again, I've  
> failed on
> Linux as well, but not quite as bad. And it's not included in all  
> Linux
> distributions, at least it wasn't when I checked a while back)

Well, I know Redhat has RPM's that look reasonable.  I'm not a big  
Linux user myself.  (More a BSD bigot, to be honest.)

> And finally, there's backwards compatibility. We're still going to  
> have
> to support all the existing ones for the forseeable future unless you
> want to prevent all older clients from connecting (hint: you don't).

No question.  Just a thought for the future.


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The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
Henry.B.Hotz@jpl.nasa.gov, or hbhotz@oxy.edu