SAMP on Windows

[Mark Taylor]

On Tue, 13 May 2008, Thomas Boch wrote:

> 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 ?

I can see Luigi's suggestion does make sense from a Windows perspective,
but like Thomas I think the additional effort of implementation makes
this quite problematic.  Since registry read/write libraries presumably
only exist for MS Windows, it means that developers would need to
develop and build applications on Windows in order for them to be able
to perform SAMP messaging on Windows.  In the case of Java I think
that registry access would require using a native library (anyone 
know different?) which could constitute a serious obstacle to 
development and deployment.

So I would much rather stick with a lock file if it can be made to work - 
the problem is finding a non-ambiguous location, that is, one which 
can be identified from any language.

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote:

> I'm also not a Wiindows user; But, isn't "C:\" a ubiquitous path that 
> could be used? If we assume Cygwin is installed, the "/tmp" should
> also be available. Does it need to be more complicated?

I don't think we should assume Cygwin, but I like the idea of using C:\.
Probably this should be qualified by a user name so that hubs of multiple
users do not interfere with each other (or is multiple simultaneous
users on the same machine effectively impossible on Windows?).
Can any Windows experts comment on whether this might be problematic,
e.g. is C:\ always present and writable?

Mark

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/