Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] Insights to the Message Class and Network Routines

[Glyn M. <gly...@gm...>]

Peter,

On 23 May 2007 19:42:26 +0200, Peter Simons <si...@cr...> wrote:

>
> I wonder what our users hope to find in this library when it's
> finished. Please, everyone feel encouraged to post a list of
> things you would personally like to have; things you miss when
> writing network-oriented C++ code.


I'll put my user's hat on for the moment:

1) A set of easy-to-use common protocols.  When using C++ I find myself
rewriting a lot of this kind of code.

2) The ability to create and use custom protocols within the network
framework.  In my current position, I find myself communicating with exotic
hardware that uses their own protocols.  I'd love to have a way to just use
these within a C++ network framework.

3) Support for encryption and authentication.

Peter, I'd go along with all four points in your list too.

I use C++ a lot in my work and I look with envy at other languages which
have much better standard library support for network programming.  To my
mind, this is a major flaw with the current C++ libraries, that there is no
standard support for something as important as network programming.  Of
course, the recent discussions on this list demonstrate that is far from
being simple even to decide what kind of support C++ programmers require
with approaches from server and client perspectives.  Another difficulty is
that programmers quite different points of access (for want of a better
term) to programming networking applications.  What I mean by that is that
different applications need to be written on different network layers and it
is important that a library expose an interface to each layer.


Anyway, we have also talked about DNS:
> I feel an asynchronous DNS resolver is beyond the scope of Asio
> or Boost.Network. Providing convenient and type-safe access to
> the asynchronous resolvers other people have written, however,
> might be worthwhile.


I agree with this.  More generally, I think its important that we provide
simple, type-safe means for interfacing with other existing network C++
libraries and applications.

G