From:	Richard Dawe <richdawe AT bigfoot DOT com>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: netbd.h, sockets.h, in.h and types.h don't work
Date:	Mon, 29 May 2000 22:31:20 +0100
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To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Hello.

Chris Lee wrote:
> The solution to the problem is pretty simple. DJGPP should seriously
> consider adding/intergrating the WATT32 and libnet packages to the basic
> distrubtion.

The addition of a networking library to DJGPP would probably add a lot of
code to libc. If most people don't use networking, is it worth it?

As for integration, the current networking libraries plug in quite nicely,
because of the well-designed File System Extension (FSEXT) feature of
DJGPP. For example, BSD sockets are created using the socket() call, which
can be in the library. After that everything can be handled cleanly using
a FSEXT, so DJGPP's libc does not need modifying to support sockets. The
networking libraries can mostly just slot in, only needing to add some
headers.

So it seems that the only remaining problem is to distribute these
networking libraries with DJGPP. Well, libsocket is in the v2tk/ directory
on the Simtelnet archive. Perhaps Watt-32 and libnet should be placed
there too.

I guess the real problem is that there isn't one networking library that
does all platforms DJGPP runs on: DOS, Windows 3.x, '95, '98, NT, 2000.
Perhaps that will be solved one day.

> It'll be a win for everybody. DJGPP will be able to compile more
> programs, especially ones ported from linux, and the Watt32 and libnet
> authors will get more people testing/debugging their code.

I'm not convinced that adding these libraries to DJGPP would make any
difference to the amount of testing they would get. IIRC libnet does not
have a BSD socket interface, so that can't be used for porting.

Hmmm, bye,

-- 
Richard Dawe
richdawe AT bigfoot DOT com ICQ 47595498 http://www.bigfoot.com/~richdawe/

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