Re: Specification of "/" in the host name (for Unix socket support)

On 14/09/2003 01:05 Oliver Jowett wrote:
> [snip]
> It's entirely possible to do support for unix sockets in a way that only
> requires the JNI piece (and, in fact, most of the support classes) if you
> actually *want* support for unix sockets. You need one layer of
> indirection
> so that the generic code can deal in terms of a "PgSocket" interface
> always,
> then just have different implementations that are loaded dynamically by
> name
> based on the URL's scheme; if the load fails because of a
> ClassNotFoundException or UnsatisfiedLinkError (because the AF_UNIX
> support
> classes or JNI library are not available) you just don't support that URL
> scheme.
>
> So you can still distribute a generic type-4 driver with a note that says
> "if you want AF_UNIX support, you need to make an implementation of these
> classes available to the driver, e.g. by installing this piece of
> JNI-supported code available at ..".
>
> Would this satisfy your objections?

To a certain extent. I'd have to see the actual implementation though. Of
course, by that point it would be a done deal :(

>
> Actually, my real concern is this bit (from the GNU Classpath docs):
>
> Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is
> making
> a combined work based on this library. Thus, the terms and conditions of
> the
> GNU General Public License cover the whole combination.
>
> This would seem to make it hard to build & distribute a version of the
> driver that built against the AF_UNIX code that's "derived from GNU
> classpath" without invoking the GPL on the whole driver, even with the
> sort
> of indirection I described above. We'd need a generic interface for
> AF_UNIX
> sockets to build against, where one implementation was the
> GNU-classpath-derived code, plus a search mechanism etc .. basically
> reproduce much of the framework that java.net provides for socket
> implementations.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water: der-dum,
der-dum, here comes the GPL. And it's an issue that I have to be very
careful of. Hopefully the committers will take a long, hard look at this
before accepting the patch.

--
Paul Thomas
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