[jcifs] Re: Tridge's PIDL compiler and the Samba4 IDLs.

[Christopher R. Hertel]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 08:32:11PM -0400, Eric Glass wrote:
> > Second, Jarapac/idlc is a generic toolchain. We are not just interested in
> > Windows management functions. I want people with MS-RPC and DCE projects
> > to be able integrate Java easily.  I want high-compatibility so that it
> > can be used for things we didn't anticipate. That's when the interesting
> > stuff happens. Otherwise why are we doing this? So we can list Unicode
> > share names. No. With a little luck, people will be able to basically copy
> > a stationary, run 'ant compile' on their interface definitions, and get a
> > jar and API documentation. Using PIDL would require converting all of
> > their interfaces to the PIDL syntax.
> > 
> 
> Actually, *both* would probably be useful for Jarapac; as Chris noted,
> the Samba folk have done a lot of stuff with PIDL that could be
> leveraged with a backend generating Jarapac stubs.  Plus, it's pretty
> much a given that they will continue prolifically expanding the
> library of PIDL going forward.

...and the language.

Yes, I was talking to Tridge and he agrees with this.  He see's Mike's 
position as well and is very interested in seeing the results.

We came up with a cool idea.  It should be possible to write a back-end to 
PIDL that would produce MIDL-compatible IDL code.  That will give us a way 
to translate the Samba IDL code to a format compatible with Mike's 
compiler.

> Interoperability with MIDL would have obvious advantages, as noted. 
> Realistically speaking, most IDL development outside of Samba is
> currently done against MIDL; it would be ideal to take this existing
> MIDL code and pump out instant java client and server stubs. 
> Eventually this could include COM/DCOM interfaces, which would allow
> interoperability with a huge slew of other applications.

Yep.

> I think both projects would have value, and could be able to coexist
> independently.

That sounds like the right answer.

More soon.

Chris -)-----

> Eric

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
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