Elimination of Howl backend for bonjour prpl

[Evan Schoenberg]

On Dec 5, 2007, at 6:04 PM, Daniel Atallah wrote:

> On Dec 5, 2007 3:11 PM, Luke Schierer <lschiere at pidgin.im> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 02:49:25PM -0500, Daniel Atallah wrote:
> > There are now 3 implemenations of the mdns functionality for the  
> bonjour
> > prpl: Avahi, Howl and DnsSD (Apple Bonjour) (only used on win32).
> >
> > At this point, since Howl has been discontinued for quite a while,  
> and
> > because I don't want to have to maintain it, I'm planning to  
> eliminate the
> > Howl implementation for the next release from the im.pidgin.pidgin  
> branch.
> >
> > There are a number of things that don't work correctly in it right  
> now (for
> > example, it doesn't receive updates and buddy icons are not  
> supported).
> >
> > Does anyone have a compelling reason why this shouldn't be done?
> >
> > -D
>
> Which are the Adium guys using?
>
> Neither.  Adium doesn't use our Bonjour prpl, they have a completely  
> different implementation.

*nod* A GSoC student modernized our Bonjour protocol plugin, which  
uses the libezv library [1], this summer.  I argued that his project  
(which didn't specify implementation initially) should have been to  
improve the libpurple bonjour prpl and make it integrate into the mDNS  
stack of OS X, but it was ultimately decided that his best learning  
could occur with a language he knew well (Objective C) rather than  
struggling with the basics of C and that while he had good mentorship  
available for the libezv work (Andrew Wellington, author of libezv,  
offered to mentor him) there wasn't someone from the Adium team who  
could server a similar role in libpurple.

Out of curiosity, Daniel, do you know if the Apple DnsSD version would  
work with OS X's mDNS stack?  (That implementation didn't exist when  
all this discussion took place previously).

-Evan

[1] http://www.allocinit.net/apps/libezv for what it's worth, though  
Adium's repository is the only place it lives in its modern form
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