I think it might be a good idea for us to collect feedback on the most 
desired libraries and apps to port to ruby.

If we find that many of us don't use ruby because of a specific missing 
library, then we can work together to address that need (perhaps even 
pooling money together to pay developers).

I believe having a page devoted to this issue might be a good way to get 
started.  Something to collect, categorize and organize this info so we 
can better understand what might provide the best ROI.

What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  For 
example, I'd love to see Perl's IPN (paypal) module ported to Ruby.

And what are the top 5 apps you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  I'd love 
to see Trac ported to Ruby (especially Trac's web-based svn repository 
viewer/differ which I prefer over viewcvs).

ps

If you speak Japanese, it would be good to get feedback from the 
thriving Japanese ruby community translated for this as well.

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 12:31:28 +0900, Thursday
<nospam@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org> wrote:
> And what are the top 5 apps you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  I'd love
> to see Trac ported to Ruby (especially Trac's web-based svn repository
> viewer/differ which I prefer over viewcvs).
+1

A Rails version of Trac would rock.

Leon

Thursday ha scritto:
> I think it might be a good idea for us to collect feedback on the most 
> desired libraries and apps to port to ruby.

if you look in the archives you could find some threads about it, mostly 
from 2003. That was the time where ruby was still mostly considered "the 
cool language with so few libraries".
I especially remember this:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/62383

where Hal Fulton had this list. I don't think much stuff on that list is 
missing, now.

A good place to start would be to look at the top downloads from CPAN
(that's the Perl archive for those that don't know) and see what we're
missing.  You can find the "Phalanx 100" at
http://qa.perl.org/phalanx/distros.html.

- From the Top 10:

It looks like Ruby is mostly covered here.  The only thing I'm not sure
about is the "MailTools".  Everything else is core or has 3rd party
equivalents.

- From the Biggies:

The Oracle driver needs serious work.  If there's one man I could
recruit into the Ruby community from Perl it would be Tim Bunce.

We need a recursive descent parser.  Do we have one?

I'm not sure about a couple of these, such as HTML::Tagset,
IO::Socket::SSL, or Net_SSLeay.

The rest look like they're core or covered by 3rd party packages,
except SpamAssassin (which is an application, not a module, afaik).

As for the rest, take a look, and see if there's anything that jumps
out that Ruby doesn't have that folks might think it useful.
Regards,

Dan

Daniel Berger wrote:
> A good place to start would be to look at the top downloads from CPAN
> (that's the Perl archive for those that don't know) and see what we're
> missing.  You can find the "Phalanx 100" at
> http://qa.perl.org/phalanx/distros.html.
> 
> - From the Top 10:
> 
> It looks like Ruby is mostly covered here.  The only thing I'm not sure
> about is the "MailTools".  Everything else is core or has 3rd party
> equivalents.
> 
> - From the Biggies:
> 
> The Oracle driver needs serious work.  If there's one man I could
> recruit into the Ruby community from Perl it would be Tim Bunce.
> 
> We need a recursive descent parser.  Do we have one?

I'm working on a Packrat parser, similar to XTC.

http://www.cs.nyu.edu/rgrimm/xtc/

But progress is slow due to many other activities at the moment.

Regards,

   Michael

On Jan 7, 2005, at 10:39 AM, Michael Neumann wrote:

> I'm working on a Packrat parser, similar to XTC.
>
> http://www.cs.nyu.edu/rgrimm/xtc/
>
> But progress is slow due to many other activities at the moment.

That sounds very interesting to me.  Do you have a project page?

James Edward Gray II

On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:

> And what are the top 5 apps you'd like to see ported to Ruby?

http://zoe.nu/

On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:

> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?

http://jakarta.apache.org/lucene/docs/index.html
http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/
http://simpleweb.sourceforge.net/

PA ha scritto:
> 
> On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:
> 
>> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?
> 
> 
> http://jakarta.apache.org/lucene/docs/index.html

ah, this would indeed be cool

> http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/

are'nt rubymail or tmail a good fit ?

> http://simpleweb.sourceforge.net/

I don't understand what simple is. Is'nt it very similar to webrick ?

Hello PA,


P> On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:

>> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?

P> http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/

No please not. Not this stupid overengineered library that tries to
merge things in an abstract interface that are too different.

I want forget every minute of my life where i worked with this stuff
and it was a serious amount - just because it was so slow that
i always feared to die on a coffeine shock while working with it.



-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's
 

Hi Lothar,

On Jan 07, 2005, at 19:24, Lothar Scholz wrote:

> Hello PA,
>
>
> P> On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:
>
>>> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?
>
> P> http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/
>
> No please not. Not this stupid overengineered library that tries to
> merge things in an abstract interface that are too different.

Hmmm... don't take it too literally. What I wanted to hint at is that a 
library to deal with all the trivia of email handling would be quite 
useful. Alter all, who wants to write a MIME parsing library for every 
new project...

> I want forget every minute of my life where i worked with this stuff
> and it was a serious amount - just because it was so slow that
> i always feared to die on a coffeine shock while working with it.

Oh, my... it's not THAT bad :P

Here is another one for you:

http://jmdns.sourceforge.net/

Again, this is not specifically about a particular implementation, but 
rather the functionalities it offers:

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/rendezvous/

Cheers,

PA>

PA ha scritto:
> Hi Lothar,
> 
> On Jan 07, 2005, at 19:24, Lothar Scholz wrote:
> 
>> Hello PA,
>>
>>
>> P> On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:
>>
>>>> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?
>>
>>
>> P> http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/
>>
>> No please not. Not this stupid overengineered library that tries to
>> merge things in an abstract interface that are too different.
> 
> 
> Hmmm... don't take it too literally. What I wanted to hint at is that a 
> library to deal with all the trivia of email handling would be quite 
> useful. Alter all, who wants to write a MIME parsing library for every 
> new project...
> 
>> I want forget every minute of my life where i worked with this stuff
>> and it was a serious amount - just because it was so slow that
>> i always feared to die on a coffeine shock while working with it.
> 
> 
> Oh, my... it's not THAT bad :P
> 
> Here is another one for you:
> 
> http://jmdns.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Again, this is not specifically about a particular implementation, but 
> rather the functionalities it offers:
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/macosx/rendezvous/
> 

IIRC we have rendezvous implementation floating on rubyforge cherk it 
out.. and don't forget Rinda::Ring

Perl's HTML::Mason - http://masonhq.com/

I have started doing this, but it is far from ready to release.

Don

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 12:31:28 +0900, Thursday
<nospam@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org> wrote:
> I think it might be a good idea for us to collect feedback on the most
> desired libraries and apps to port to ruby.
> 
> If we find that many of us don't use ruby because of a specific missing
> library, then we can work together to address that need (perhaps even
> pooling money together to pay developers).
> 
> I believe having a page devoted to this issue might be a good way to get
> started.  Something to collect, categorize and organize this info so we
> can better understand what might provide the best ROI.
> 
> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  For
> example, I'd love to see Perl's IPN (paypal) module ported to Ruby.
> 
> And what are the top 5 apps you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  I'd love
> to see Trac ported to Ruby (especially Trac's web-based svn repository
> viewer/differ which I prefer over viewcvs).
> 
> ps
> 
> If you speak Japanese, it would be good to get feedback from the
> thriving Japanese ruby community translated for this as well.
> 
> 


-- 
Don Owens
regexman@gmail.com

On Jan 07, 2005, at 20:06, gabriele renzi wrote:

> IIRC we have rendezvous implementation floating on rubyforge cherk it 
> out..

This one?

http://rubyforge.org/projects/dnssd/

Those are only binding to Apple's implementation as far as I can tell.

> and don't forget Rinda::Ring

What's the protocol used by Rinda::Ring? It is home grown? Standard 
based?

http://www.zeroconf.org/

Another library which would be useful, is something like dnsjava:

http://www.dnsjava.org/

Cheers,

PA.

Don Owens ha scritto:
> Perl's HTML::Mason - http://masonhq.com/
> 
> I have started doing this, but it is far from ready to release.
> 
> Don
> 

If I understand correctly, I think Mortar is a mason-like project:
http://fallingsnow.net/ruby/

I don't know how usable is it, but maybe you can cooperate :)

PA ha scritto:
> 
> On Jan 07, 2005, at 20:06, gabriele renzi wrote:
> 
>> IIRC we have rendezvous implementation floating on rubyforge cherk it 
>> out..
> 
> 
> This one?
> 
> http://rubyforge.org/projects/dnssd/
> 
> Those are only binding to Apple's implementation as far as I can tell.

mh, I just recalled it, I don't know anything aboiut it.
And maybe I was tricked from this:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/rendezvous-dev/2003/Jul/msg00011.html
wich points out jmdsn

>> and don't forget Rinda::Ring
> 
> 
> What's the protocol used by Rinda::Ring? It is home grown? Standard based?

I think it is home grown, but I may be wrong.

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 02:51:30 +0900, gabriele renzi
<rff_rff@remove-yahoo.it> wrote:

> > http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/
> 
> are'nt rubymail or tmail a good fit ?

After a quick glance, they seem to only deal with RFC822/2882 and
MIME. This leaves out POP3, IMAP, SMTP, etc..

> > http://simpleweb.sourceforge.net/
> 
> I don't understand what simple is.

Simple is a small, self-contained and embeddable HTTP engine.

> Is'nt it very similar to webrick ?

At first glance, yes.

Cheers,

PA.

On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:

> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?

And another one!

http://www.bouncycastle.org/

PA.

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 04:59:44 +0900, PA <petite.abeille@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 02:51:30 +0900, gabriele renzi
> <rff_rff@remove-yahoo.it> wrote:
>>> http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/
>> are'nt rubymail or tmail a good fit ?
> After a quick glance, they seem to only deal with RFC822/2882 and
> MIME. This leaves out POP3, IMAP, SMTP, etc..

Right. Rubymail and tmail are to be layered on top of Net::IMAP
(does this exist yet?), Net::POP3, Net::SMTP, etc. They are
"mail-handling" libraries, not end-to-end-to-end solutions. Ruby
provides the rest "natively."

>>> http://simpleweb.sourceforge.net/
>> I don't understand what simple is.
> Simple is a small, self-contained and embeddable HTTP engine.

Just like WEBrick, which is part of the Ruby distribution.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca

* Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> [0120 20:20]:
> Right. Rubymail and tmail are to be layered on top of Net::IMAP
> (does this exist yet?), 

yes, and it's very good.

-- 
'Oh, wait you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.'
		-- Bender
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

* PA <petite.abeille@gmail.com> [0138 20:38]:
> 
> On Jan 07, 2005, at 21:20, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> 
> >Right. Rubymail and tmail are to be layered on top of Net::IMAP
> >(does this exist yet?), Net::POP3, Net::SMTP, etc.
> 
> I see. What about TLS/STARTTLS support? Are there server side 
> implementations of those protocols as well?
> 
> Another "library" which is of interest is JNDI:
> 
> http://java.sun.com/products/jndi/
> 
> In other words: LDAP.

have a look at ruby-ldap, it's well-featured -and fast too,
outperforms perl for everything I've used it so far.
 

-- 
'Everybody I know who is right always agrees with ME.'
		-- Rev Lady Mal
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

* PA <petite.abeille@gmail.com> [0102 20:02]:
> 
> On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:
> 
> >What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?
> 
> And another one!
> 
> http://www.bouncycastle.org/

That's just a crypto lib, though, isn't it?

Right, I posted three times.
If I click my heels together can someone write me a webdav library
please ? Client side is fine, thanks :)

-- 
'My life, and by extension everyone else's, is meaningless.'
		-- Bender
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

"Michael Neumann" <mneumann@ntecs.de> wrote in message
news:41DEBB3D.4030108@ntecs.de...

> I'm working on a Packrat parser, similar to XTC.
>
> http://www.cs.nyu.edu/rgrimm/xtc/

Zounds. It would have been great if Ruby 2.0 had such an extensible grammar
basis.

On January 7, 2005 08:06 am, Daniel Berger wrote:
> 
> We need a recursive descent parser.  Do we have one?
>
It depends on what you are after.  There are a couple of versions of COCO for 
Ruby, one an extension library, the other in pure Ruby.  Coco is LL(1), so it 
not quite in the same class as the LL(n) parsers, though it still very 
capable.

Aside from those, there is RACC and maybe some others.

As an aside, what do you see as the pressing need for a recursive decent 
parser?


-- 
-mark.  (probertm at acm dot org)

Hi --

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Thursday wrote:

> I think it might be a good idea for us to collect feedback on the most 
> desired libraries and apps to port to ruby.
>
> If we find that many of us don't use ruby because of a specific missing 
> library, then we can work together to address that need (perhaps even pooling 
> money together to pay developers).

See:

http://www.rubycentral.org/grant/announce.html

for an existing grant program to support library development
initiatives.  Hopefully this thread will spark some ideas and
grant applications!


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net

Thursday wrote:
> ...
> What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  For 
> example, I'd love to see Perl's IPN (paypal) module ported to Ruby.
> 
> And what are the top 5 apps you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  I'd love 
> to see Trac ported to Ruby (especially Trac's web-based svn repository 
> viewer/differ which I prefer over viewcvs).

Why ported?  Why not a list of just the top whatever apps and libs 
people might like? Are there bonus points for copying what has been done 
in another language?

I'd like to see a robust pure-Ruby XSLT library, and a pure-Ruby Jabber 
server.    Whether it copies some app in another language makes no diff 
to me, so long as it has a Ruby API + full spec/rec compliance.

Also, off the top if my head, I'd also like pure-Ruby VOIP/digital 
telephony libraries.  Have no idea what they would be ported from.

On a a more philosophical note, I'd like to see Ruby apps that are the 
first to address emerging technology and user behavior.


James

P.S.
One other item for the wish list: some magic code that lets Ruby call 
code written in other languages so that they no longer need porting.

Dick Davies wrote:

> If I click my heels together can someone write me a webdav library
> please ? Client side is fine, thanks :)

WEBrick's Filehandler has TODOs for those. So maybe you could work 
together with the WEBrick maintainer.

PA :
> http://jakarta.apache.org/lucene/docs/index.html

http://rubyforge.org/projects/rucene/

> http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/

gem install actionmailer

> http://simpleweb.sourceforge.net/

WEBrick

-- 
Sascha Ebach

Quoteing rasputnik@hellooperator.net, on Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 06:52:00AM +0900:
> If I click my heels together can someone write me a webdav library
> please ? Client side is fine, thanks :)

http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/libneon-ruby/

Have you tried it?

Sam

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 23:26:31 +0900, Sascha Ebach
<se@digitale-wertschoepfung.de> wrote:
> PA :
> > http://jakarta.apache.org/lucene/docs/index.html
> 
> http://rubyforge.org/projects/rucene/
> 
<snip>
> --
> Sascha Ebach

There isn't actually any usable code in that project.  I have however
had some luck using rjb 
http://arton.no-ip.info/collabo/backyard/?RubyJavaBridge to use lucene
in my ruby programs.  There seems to be some sort of memory leak
though...

Leslie Hensley

leon breedt <bitserf@gmail.com> writes:

> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 12:31:28 +0900, Thursday
> <nospam@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org> wrote:
>> And what are the top 5 apps you'd like to see ported to Ruby?  I'd love
>> to see Trac ported to Ruby (especially Trac's web-based svn repository
>> viewer/differ which I prefer over viewcvs).
> +1
>
> A Rails version of Trac would rock.
>
> Leon

And please make it general and flexible enough to support other
version control systems like darcs or GNU Arch too... that would
really rock. :-)

Christian Neukirchen
<chneukirchen@gmail.com>

* PA [Sat, 8 Jan 2005 02:20:22 +0900]:
>  On Jan 07, 2005, at 04:31, Thursday wrote:
> 
> > What are the top 5 libraries you'd like to see ported to Ruby?
>  http://jakarta.apache.org/lucene/docs/index.html
+1

Regards
Lutz

* Florian Gross <flgr@ccan.de> [0116 11:16]:
> Dick Davies wrote:
> 
> >If I click my heels together can someone write me a webdav library
> >please ? Client side is fine, thanks :)
> 
> WEBrick's Filehandler has TODOs for those. So maybe you could work 
> together with the WEBrick maintainer.

Cheers, but I was really looking for clientside - I'll look into Sams 
neon suggestion (I know cadaver is built on neon, so it should do most
of what I need).
 

-- 
'You may need to metaphorically make a deal with the devil.
By 'devil' I mean robot devil and by 'metaphorically' I mean get your coat.'
		-- Bender
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

Hello Dick,

DD> * Florian Gross <flgr@ccan.de> [0116 11:16]:
>> Dick Davies wrote:
>> 
>> >If I click my heels together can someone write me a webdav library
>> >please ? Client side is fine, thanks :)
>> 
>> WEBrick's Filehandler has TODOs for those. So maybe you could work 
>> together with the WEBrick maintainer.

DD> Cheers, but I was really looking for clientside - I'll look into Sams
DD> neon suggestion (I know cadaver is built on neon, so it should do most
DD> of what I need).
 
Remember that since we don't have native threads neon will block your
client application. If you want to write a GUI frontend for WebDAV
this makes the lib unuseable. We either need a native ruby library or
a better wrapper.



-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's
 

* Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@scriptolutions.com> [0116 13:16]:
> Hello Dick,
> 
> DD> * Florian Gross <flgr@ccan.de> [0116 11:16]:
> >> Dick Davies wrote:
> >> 
> >> >If I click my heels together can someone write me a webdav library
> >> >please ? Client side is fine, thanks :)
> >> 
> >> WEBrick's Filehandler has TODOs for those. So maybe you could work 
> >> together with the WEBrick maintainer.
> 
> DD> Cheers, but I was really looking for clientside - I'll look into Sams
> DD> neon suggestion (I know cadaver is built on neon, so it should do most
> DD> of what I need).
>  
> Remember that since we don't have native threads neon will block your
> client application. If you want to write a GUI frontend for WebDAV
> this makes the lib unuseable. We either need a native ruby library or
> a better wrapper.

Thanks for the warning, but I'm really just after a publishing tool
(maybe make it a rake task one day) as an FTP replacemnet - webdav over
ssl is my weapon of choice for this kind of thing.

I was also thinking of playing round with iCal, but I never get near the
Mac these days (I gave my girl Riven to play while we both quit smoking - 
when I get into that I have trouble getting up to pee, never mind smoke)
so the RubyCocoa driver is out....

--
'Oh how awful. Did he at least die peacefully? ....To shreds you say, tsk tsk tsk.
Well, how's his wife holding up? ....To shreds, you say...'
		-- Prof. Farnsworth
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

PA wrote:
> Here is another one for you:
> 
> http://jmdns.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Again, this is not specifically about a particular implementation, but 
> rather the functionalities it offers:
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/macosx/rendezvous/

mDNS / Rendezvous is at the top of my list.  Although there is a ruby 
package for this, it relies on the C rendezvous stuff compiled as 
libraries -- and it's not clear from the distributions how to do this, etc.

I'd *love* to see a pure-Ruby implementation, or at least an 
implementation that was much easier to install and configure.

For what it's worth, Python has a pure Python implementation of a mDNS / 
Rendezvous library, but it's badly broken.  Right now at work, we're 
days or weeks away from starting serious work on some network tools that 
require rendezvous, there's a heavy push for using the Python 
implementation because it's pure python, and despite its brokenness, it 
has a better chance of working across different platforms and such than 
does the Ruby version.  Of course, I'd love to get the Ruby one working. 
    I'd even devote some time to working on this, but I'm not sure where 
to start.

Ben

Quoteing bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com, on Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 03:27:53AM +0900:
> mDNS / Rendezvous is at the top of my list.  Although there is a ruby 
> package for this, it relies on the C rendezvous stuff compiled as 
> libraries -- and it's not clear from the distributions how to do this, etc.

If you asked the folks who put this together, wouldn't they would help
you with this?

Is it hard, or is it that its a C library and you haven't worked much
with building C libraries? Or are you on a windows box? I follow the
Apple rendezvous mailling list, and I get the impression they have a
windows release of the client library, at least, maybe the server, too.

As for pure-ruby, I'm working on this.

I can do .local name lookups by multicast right now (email me directly
and I can give you a copy of the code, if you want to look at it).

It's built on top of the DNS support in ruby's resolv.rb, and I'm in the
process of working on how to use that support in the simplest way, and
without having to get the ruby library changed, which might be hard ( my
two recent bug reports are a first step, though).

After I do this cleanup, I should have address -> name lookups working.

What remains then is:

  - lookups of arbitrary records (might come for free, but will have to
    test)

  - DNS-SD (i think it's basically a formatting convention for TXT
    records, which should be pretty easy)

  - "browsing" - i.e., issuing a request and watching the net to see all
    services as they are advertised.

  This last will be the most difficult for me... because it requires
  listening to multicasts on port 5353, and I run OS X which already has
  a Rendezvous implementation. The easiest way, oddly, might be to
  implement a mDNS server in ruby, so that I can run it on a
  non-standard port, and test my client on a non-standard port. Ouf.

> For what it's worth, Python has a pure Python implementation of a mDNS / 
> Rendezvous library, but it's badly broken.  Right now at work, we're 

In what way? I'd like to avoid this brokenness, is it just bugs, or is
there something fundamental they are not doing well?

Cheers,
Sam

Sam Roberts wrote:
> If you asked the folks who put this together, wouldn't they would help
> you with this?

Most likely. :)

> Is it hard, or is it that its a C library and you haven't worked much
> with building C libraries? Or are you on a windows box? I follow the
> Apple rendezvous mailling list, and I get the impression they have a
> windows release of the client library, at least, maybe the server, too.

The problem is that it isn't a library.  When I last downloaded the 
Apple source, sometime in December, it built a set of applications, but 
no library that I could see.  The Ruby code, on the other hand, expected 
a library.  I wasn't sure how to get from what I had to what I needed, 
and I only had a few hours to poke around at it, so I dropped it, but 
when it came back up on the list, I pounced.  :)

> As for pure-ruby, I'm working on this.

WooHoo!!

>   - "browsing" - i.e., issuing a request and watching the net to see all
>     services as they are advertised.
> 
>   This last will be the most difficult for me... because it requires
>   listening to multicasts on port 5353, and I run OS X which already has
>   a Rendezvous implementation. The easiest way, oddly, might be to
>   implement a mDNS server in ruby, so that I can run it on a
>   non-standard port, and test my client on a non-standard port. Ouf.

That's the part I really need.  I have some computers that are all 
rendezvous-enabled, and I'm going to be writing a tool that deals with 
groups of them.  I just need to know what's out there.

>>For what it's worth, Python has a pure Python implementation of a mDNS / 
>>Rendezvous library, but it's badly broken.  Right now at work, we're 
> 
> In what way? I'd like to avoid this brokenness, is it just bugs, or is
> there something fundamental they are not doing well?

I assume it's just bugs, but I haven't spent long on it either.  The 
main problems are a complete lack of any kind of documentation, and the 
fact that the programs seem to mask SIG_INT, so if you start them you 
can only kill them from another terminal or something.  It may be that 
they work perfectly aside from the SIG_INT issue, but I couldn't figure 
out how to use them because of the lack of docs.  I don't think it's 
anything you'd have to worry about though, unless you're copying the 
Python code, line for line.

Ben

On Jan 19, 2005, at 20:36, Sam Roberts wrote:

> As for pure-ruby, I'm working on this.

FWIW...

Python Multicast DNS Service Discovery

pyzeroconf project is a full implementation of the Zeroconf Multicast 
DNS Service Discovery protocols for Python 2.2 and up.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyzeroconf/

Cheers

--
PA
http://alt.textdrive.com/

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:36:02 +0900, Sam Roberts <sroberts@uniserve.com> wrote:
> Is it hard, or is it that its a C library and you haven't worked much
> with building C libraries? Or are you on a windows box? I follow the
> Apple rendezvous mailling list, and I get the impression they have a
> windows release of the client library, at least, maybe the server, too.
On Windows they've a Rendezvous package (for end-users), which
includes dnssd.dll.

They also distribute a Rendezvous SDK, which includes the headers
files and .libs, and some sample C code.

I was able to easily implement bindings in C#, I don't foresee
problems for anyone wanting to do Ruby (either with DL or native
extension) bindings. The API is quite UNIX-ish, though on free UNIXen
libhowl probably has an easier API to use.

Implementing non-blocking support with Ruby should be fairly
straightforward as the API returns a "file descriptor", but just be
aware that file handles and socket handles aren't as interchangeable
on Win32 :)

Leon