the client

[Richard Sharpe]

At 12:22 PM 8/20/98 +1000, tridge wrote:
>We need to work out what we are going to do about smbclient.
>
>Right now we have several code sets:
>
>1) the head branch. The code is very messy and badly designed but does
>   generally work. It uses clientutil.c as its "library", although it
>   does most SMB stuff inline by writing into a packet buffer.
>
>2) the ntdom branch in sambaold. This one was done primarily by
>   Luke. It is nicely structured. It splits the client code into
>   sections and uses Lukes varient of clientgen.c. It has the nt rpc
>   client stuff, which allows you to do all sorts of nice stuff with
>   pipes. It has not been autoconf converted and many bugs we have
>   fixed in the main branch are not fixed here.
>
>3) clientgen.c in the head branch. This was my attempt at a set of
>   basic SMB client functions in a library-like format. All the head
>   branch client calls are made via this code _except_ for those from
>   smbclient! My plan at the time was to convert smbclient to use this
>   code. I never got around to it.
>
>4) the 1.9.18 branch in sambaold. This has some bug fixes from
>   Richard.
>
>As I see it we have a number of choices:
>
>1) dump the head branch client code and replace it with Lukes
>   code. This is harder than it sounds because it means reconciling
>   the differences in clientgen.c between the two versions. It also
>   means re-fixing all the bugs that have been fixed since the ntdom
>   split. some cvs history might help with that.
>
>2) convert the head branch to use clientgen.c and do some
>   restructuring so it becomes maintainable. This means losing the nt
>   client stuff luke has done.
>
>3) write a new smbclient from scratch.
>
>I think the best option is (1). Anyone else have a suggestion? 

Can I suggest that we hold off for a short while on this, because I have
several outstanding patches agains smbclient to go in yet.

Also, I want to rewrite clitar.c to include additional functionality, and
someone has asked for append capabilities as well.

>Whatever we do it will be quite a lot of work. I started to do (1)
>last night but gave up when I realised I couldn't get it done in the
>couple of hours I had available. The hard bit is reconciling the
>clientgen.c differences.

Let me take a look at this and come up with a proposal ...


Regards
-------
Richard Sharpe, sharpe at ns.aus.com, NIC-Handle:RJS96
NS Computer Software and Services P/L, 
Ph: +61-8-8281-0063, FAX: +61-8-8250-2080, 
Samba, Linux, Apache, Digital UNIX, AIX, Netscape, Stronghold, C, ...