Using libsmbclient

[Ken Cross]

Sadly, I agree with all of your points.  

However, a simple expedient that would let foolhardy fools like me go ahead
and screw things up would be: link against the static library
(bin/libsmbclient.a).  That would effectively be the same as it is now, but
make is slightly simpler to link to a dynamic library if we fools decide to
do so.  ;)

Also, now that the versioning is somewhat dynamic, I suggest that more
detail be added ("CVS 3.0.0rc2" doesn't really nail it down enough), such as
a timestamp of the download or snapshot, or a SAMBA_VERSION_EDIT_LEVEL that
would be a monotonically increasing value whenever anything changes in cvs.
That could be incorporated into the library to see if things are in sync.

BTW, I do *not* suggest that this is in any way a priority for the general
community.

Ken
________________________________

Ken Cross

Network Storage Solutions
Phone 865.675.4070 ext 31
kcross at nssolutions.com 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Bartlett [mailto:abartlet at samba.org] 
> Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2003 7:45 PM
> To: Ken Cross
> Cc: 'Multiple recipients of list SAMBA-TECHNICAL'
> Subject: Re: Using libsmbclient
> 
> 
> On Sun, 2003-08-31 at 07:08, Ken Cross wrote:
> > Samba-folk:
> > 
> > It's very nice having libsmbclient built, but we're not 
> really using 
> > it.
> It
> > can make a significant difference if the applications are linked to 
> > the shared library.  Typical examples are, before:
> 
> 
> > It wasn't too hard to hack Makefile to build them with 
> > libscmclient.so,
> but
> > doing it in general would be trickier.  Looks like it might 
> be worth 
> > it though, especially when (like me) you want to distribute updated 
> > binaries via the internet.
> 
> There are a number of very good reasons why we have not taken 
> this path.  Firstly, we generally consider the issue of 
> shared-libraries to be 'non core' - that is, we don't 
> particularly care if they don't work on every platform, 
> because libsmbclient is the only thing affected.  
>  
> However, even where they are supported, we get into 
> difficulties - we must make it possible to link and run 
> against such a library (and the correct version of such a 
> library) both from the build directory, and from the install 
> directory.  
> 
> And before you suggest libtool as the solution to all the 
> worlds problems, I suggest you real the archives ;-)
> 
> Finally, there is the simple issue that the interfaces you 
> are using in libsmbclient are not in any way versioned, or 
> intended to be externally accessed - they change every time 
> somebody makes a change to samba, and chasing down the 
> bugreports because somebody is using a slightly old 
> libsmbclient with their smbd would be a nightmare!
> 
> Andrew Bartlett
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Bartlett                                 abartlet at pcug.org.au
> Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team  abartlet at samba.org
> Student Network Administrator, Hawker College   abartlet at hawkerc.net
> http://samba.org     http://build.samba.org     http://hawkerc.net
>