Re: NSConnection, TCP and compatibility

[Richard]

"e.sammer" wrote:
> 
> i was reading in the GNUstep faq that the GS implementation of NSConnection is
> *NOT* compatible with NeXT. i'm working on a project that is going to require
> the ability to make NSConnections to MOSX and maybe NeXT boxen. i'm curious to
> know if this is outdated or is being actively worked on. at the most basic
> level, i will certainly need to make connections to MOSX...
> 
> if this is an implementation problem, i would be happy to contribute to GS and
> write said code (if it's even possible).

I'ts not really possible ... The Apple protocol/format is proprietory
and unpublished
so you would need to -
1. reverse engineer and implement the basic protocols used.
2. reverse engineer and implement the Apple codings for all classes
(including private classes).
3. keep that reverse engineered information up to date whenever apple
release a new version or patch.

If you want to talk to MacOS-X and NeXT/OPENSTEP, you would need to
implement
separate versions for the different systems.

Also ... last time I looked, the Apple implementation was broken and
would
no longer work for inter-machine messaging, just for messaging between
objects
on the same machine (this may be fixed in the most recent release of
MacOS-X,
I haven't seen anything new about the problem on the mailing lists
though).

If you really want to have this sort of capabilty, you could use the
GNUstep
DO code as the basis for a new framework (eg. GSConnection, GSPort,
GSPortCoder
etc) and implement encoding/decoding methods for all the objects you
wanted
to send.  You could then use this entirely new framework in your MacOS-X
apps
to let them talk to GNUstep.  A fairly big job, but nothing like as big
as
trying to interact with MacOS-X DO.