Re: Proxy compliance and assistance.
On Wed, 21 Sep 2011 at 14:13:31 -0500, Mike Mestnik wrote:
> I'd like to start a movement to verify and assist projects/packages
> with the proper deployment of software that supports proxies.
In GLib-based applications, connecting using GSocketClient while having
glib-networking installed will automatically use a configured proxy; this
is much less ongoing maintenance burden than adding specific proxy support
to every networked application, so please use this route where feasible in
GLib/GNOME applications, rather than repeatedly writing app-specific proxy
code. Recent versions of telepathy-gabble (as used by Empathy for XMPP) will
automatically pick up GNOME/KDE proxy settings in this way, for instance.
(There's probably an equivalent thing I could say about Qt/KDE applications,
if I knew Qt better.)
> What I need most of all is community support, it's no good to
> confront developers or package maintainers that are insistent on
> rebelling against the use of proxies.
There's an important difference between "I think proxies don't matter" and
"I think this particular patch to support use of proxies is more maintenance
burden than it's worth"; be careful not to mistake the second for the first.
Part of a maintainer's job is to say "no" to things they're not going to be
able to maintain in future.
I for one would tend to reject a patch to add a "full" proxy implementation
to any network application that I maintained, but I'd be more likely to accept
a patch that used GProxyResolver or g_socket_client_add_application_proxy
(for GLib code) or something like libproxy or pacrunner (for non-GLib code).
S
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