Re: Bonjour Service implementation on server end

On Mon, 2013-06-17 at 13:16 +0100, Andrzej J. R. Hunt wrote:
> -Hence a custom discovery protocol was devised (multicast packets, see
> android/sdremote/src/org/libreoffice/impressremote/communication/ServerFinder.java
> for an example of the client end).

        My concern (perhaps based on ignorance) was that despite the multicast
nature of mDNS - I suspect that we have to have a single app on each
host owning the mDNS port - rather than allowing lots of separate apps
to listen to that on the same machine.

        As such, that gives some interesting platform integration problems on
Linux - whereby we have to attempt to integrate with whatever dameon /
service is owning that port on the given platform - or bear the risk (if
we get it) of screwing up whatever else wants to use that. Then of
course, we disabled TCP/IP by default anyway concerned about security -
and so this was less of a problem.

> W.r.t to actual support for this, as far as I remember it was:
> - Bonjour for Mac
> - Avahi for Linux
> - Bonjour for Windows too, but would require shipping the Bonjour
> binary along with LO.

        I guess that needs some license investigation; but sounds plausible
Bonjour is IIRC ALv2. Wrt. integrating with Avahi - I guess we don't
want hard linkage to that, in case it's not there - so that'd mean
having a plugin of some kind: do-able but a bit more work (depending how
Avahi's client functionality works).

        With an internal Bonjour on Windows, does that mean we join a bun-fight
for who owns the mDNS port on Windows ? against anyone else that tries
to have Bonjour support ? and/or would we have to ship a daemon there ?
It'd be nice to know what version requirements we have for our base-line
Mac build vs. the Bonjour API.

        Otherwise - it seems like this is the best way to get
bluetooth-incapable iPhones working ? :-) so - lets go for it I guess.

        ATB,

                Michael.

-- 
michael.meeks@suse.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot