SAMP on Windows

[Thomas Boch]

Hi Luigi,

[disclaimer : I am not a windows expert, and am ready to be
contradicted]

Thank you for your suggestion.
Using the Windows registry to store SAMP-related items sounds like a
sensible idea. But, while it seems an acceptable additional burden for
the hub implementations to have to access Windows registry, it also
means that SAMP clients will also have to be able to access it. Sure,
there must be some solutions with additional libraries, but this implies
more complexity on the SAMP client side, which I dislike.

For this reason, I think we should stick with the lock file mechanism
even on Windows, and decide a non-ambiguous location where this lock
file will be written/read from. 

Any other opinions on this topic ?

Thomas

Luigi Paioro wrote:
> 
> Hello!
> 
> I have been registered to this mailing list for only a few days and I
> have just read the SAMP protocol working draft 2008-04-30.
> 
> I have seen that the issue concerning the lock file and the hub
> discovery for the Standard Profile on Windows OS have to be discussed
> yet. I don't know whether you have already faced this topic and found a
> general agreement on what is feasible and what is not, but I suggest to
> think about the possibility to store the bootstrap information on the
> Windows Registry. For instance, the Hub could store this record
> (following the example on page 23):
> 
> Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
> Key:  Software\IVOA\SAMP\Hub
> 
> Value Name: samp.secret
> Data Type:  REG_SZ
> Value:      734144fdaab8400a1ec2
> 
> Value Name: samp.hub.xmlrpc.url
> Data Type:  REG_SZ
> Value:      http://andromeda.star.bris.ac.uk:8001/xmlrpc
> 
> Value Name: samp.profile.version
> Data Type:  REG_SZ
> Value:      1.0
> 
> Value Name: samp.yoyodyne.hubid
> Data Type:  REG_SZ
> Value:      c80995f1
> 
> Windows Registry entries can be easily handled with the majority of the
> programming languages used today (Perl, Python, Java, .NET, C, C++, ...,
> with FORTRAN I think it's tough job, but probably feasible with some
> tricks), and it's also possible to restrict the access permissions of
> the Hub key (read access to the current user only).
> 
> Certainly, the use of Windows Registry implies an additional effort for
> the developer when s/he implements a Hub or a library to access the Hub
> (client side), because a different behavior is requested depending on
> the operative system. But I think it is worth it. The use of a typically
> Windows strategy when dealing with Windows, and a typically UNIX-like OS
> strategy when dealing with UNIX-like OS is boring but smarter.
> 
> This is just my opinion and proposal (my two cents). Think about it.
> 
> Regards,
> 
>    Luigi
> 
> --
> 
> Luigi Paioro
> 
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