Re: remote hosting

[Tim McIntosh]

Hello,

I tried to send this message last week, but there were problems with  
my list subscription so I think it ended up in a black hole somewhere.

Has anyone ever addressed the issues raised in http://lists.gnu.org/ 
archive/html/gnustep-dev/2002-01/msg00013.html, regarding -NSHost  
support with X?  I couldn't find any further discussion on this topic.

> Two issues arising from recent discussions on the mailing list -
> 1. X systems can have multiple 'displays' (each display consisting  
> or a keyboard,
> a mouse, and one or more screens), but the NSHost mechanism  
> presumes that a host is
> a workstation with a single user.
>
> Should we implement some extension to -NSHost to allow for this?
>
> 2. X systems can be dumb machines without GNUstep running, so would  
> not run the
> pasteboard, notification centre, and workspace processes
>
> Should we implement some mechanism whereby some other GNUstep  
> machine could run
> the required processes on behalf of the dumb X terminal?

Ignoring, for now, the problem of supporting multiple GNUstep users  
on a single host, I'd like to have the ability to use a DISPLAY  
setting other than ":0.0" while using a local GNUstep session (gpbs,  
gdnc, etc.).  This would allow me to run GNUstep on a local display  
other than ":0.0", or control a machine remotely via a dumb  
Xterminal.  Today, this doesn't seem to be possible, as it is assumed  
that a GNUstep session is running on the remote host.

To allow this to work, I propose deleting the code that automatically  
sets the "NSHost" default whenever -NSHost is not specified and  
DISPLAY is defined (see attachment).  This would produce the behavior  
described by the table below.  The only difference from today is in  
case (B).  The proposed change would make it necessary to specify the  
-NSHost argument whenever you want to connect to a remote GNUstep  
session;  it does NOT attempt to address the issue of being able to  
specify a display other than "remote:0.0" when using -NSHost.

  -NSHost specified?  DISPLAY defined?  Behavior
  ----------------    ----------------  --------
A.      NO                  NO          Local GNUstep session,  
display on local:0.0
B.      NO                  YES         Local GNUstep session,  
display on $DISPLAY
C.      YES                 NO          Remote GNUstep session,  
display on remote:0.0
D.      YES                 YES         Remote GNUstep session,  
display on remote:0.0 (DISPLAY ignored)

This behavior seems reasonable to me, and supports my needs.   
However, I'm not really familiar with the GNUstep internals, so  
please set me straight if this is a bad idea.  Otherwise, I'd be very  
happy if someone could implement this change in the main  
distribution.  I could enter this as a bug report if that's the  
appropriate course of action for change requests.

Thanks,

Tim McIntosh

XGServer.m.patch
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