Re: `libpeer' build problem

[Johan Rydberg]

Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi Johan,  ;-)

Hi.  Thanks for you bug report.  Frankly, I'm quite surprised that
someone even knew about libpeer.  How did you find it?  Through
the p2p-hackers mailing list?

> The `configure' script of libpeer doesn't complain if `liboop' is not
> found (admitedly, it's not big deal at this stage).  The patch below
> against `configure.ac' to fix this.

Yes I know.  I planned to fix that, but other things got in the way.
Thanks for the patch.

I'm thinking about removing the requirement to use `liboop'.  Even
though it is a great event abstraction layer, it does not fit all my
needs.  I'll most likely break out the event code into a separate
"driver" so users of the library can adopt it to their special need.
I'll most likely provide default drivers for liboop, glib and maybe
even libkevent.

I'm also thinking about refactoring the network code so that I doesn't
use the socket API directly.  That would make it possible to write a
simple simulator that can be used to test libpeer, which could be
really useful.

There are also some other code (peer-conn.c) that needs to be
re-written to make this possible, but that would be a minor issue.

I had some crazy idea the other night about using GnuTLS on top of it
all, to provide some form of integrity.  I'm not sure how that would
effect the performance, though.  Esp when making new connections
(generating large random keys tend to be rather slow.)

> I appreciate your initiative in writing this library and I like the
> coding style.  I've started thinking about the implementation of a file
> fragmentation and indexing library which could be used on top of libpeer
> to produce a DHT (I'll get back to you once I have something more
> concrete to talk about if you like).

Writing a DHT on top of libpeer should be quite easy.  Actually, I
wrote a small one to test the library (src/test-3.c)  It has some
flaws; for example it does not cache lookup results on the way back
from the root node.

> BTW, according to Google, "PeerFS" is the name of some proprietary
> software; according to the USPTO [1], it's actually a trademark for a
> "peer-to-peer replicating file system".  :-(

I saw that, of course right after I've registered the project at
Savannah.  I have not yet decided what to do.  Maybe I'll ask the GNU
legal heads and see if they have an opinion what is best to do.  Maybe
the trademark isn't valid in Sweden, but I know way to little about
this.

> Thanks for your work!

Thank you for showing interest.

> Ludovic.
>
> [1] http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=d06sf9.1.1
>

~j