libsmbclient: Browsing and a URI spec?

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Christopher R. Hertel wrote:

> I agree with Armand's comments.  I'm confused by yours.  How would 
> Konqueror know what the default workgroup is?  If it sent a request to 
> find the default workgroup, what service would respond?

> On Windows systems, the default workgroup is set as a system-wide 
> parameter in the network configuration.  It doesn't matter which 
> application or which user is accessing the NetBIOS network, they all get 
> the same default.

> For libsmbclient, we can easily move beyond that.  Each application could,
> in theory, be assigned a default workgroup.  The question is simply the
> mechanism for doing so.  In my last message I suggested an architecter,
> which is simply:  libsmbclient would first check for a global
> configuration file, then a user config file.  From that point on, the
> application could change any defaults, possibly as a result of reading its
> own config file. 

> This allows both a standard config file for libsmbclient and
> per-application (or even per-process) settings. 

> Have I made this any clearer?

Putting on my administrator hat, I have misgivings about libsmbclient using
anything /other/ than smb.conf as its global config file.  There are other
client applications (smbclient, smbsh[, smbmount?]) which already use
smb.conf, and libsmbclient, being derived from Samba code, already has support
for this file.  It's true that smb.conf is a little heavy for libsmbclient's
needs, but I don't think that's enough reason to introduce a new conf file
with a new format.  When I've already configured the workgroup setting, the
'name resolve order', the wins server address, and all sorts of other client
options in smb.conf, why would I want to specify them again in a different
global config?

Per-user config for libsmbclient shouldn't come at the expense of
administrative ease, IMHO.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer