[Opensync-devel] Comments needed: mozilla-sync needs a redesign

[Henrik /K. <he...@ka...>]

mozilla-sync needs a redesign.


Currently, mozilla-sync is a threaded plugin to OpenSync.

It will initialize a private instance of XPCOM and access address-books 
etc. as it works as an OpenSync plugin.

Now, this approach is broken by design, since the 
Mozilla/Thunderbird/XPCOM functions are not thread safe.

If the Thunderbird GUI is running in another process, all kinds of 
disasters may happen because of the lack of thead/process safety.

Even worse: the blueZync GUI (an extension to Thunderbird) runs OpenSync 
(in it's own thread) so here, for sure, we have a problem due to the 
lack of thead/process safety.


One possible solution would be to implement some process/thread in 
Thunderbird to listen for custom messages from a modified version of 
mozilla-sync.

I.e. to keep the mozilla-sync threaded, but instead of letting it access 
XPCOM data directly, it would implement some proprietary protocol to 
talk to a proprietary listener in  Thunderbird.

This seems to be an unnecessary complication, as OpenSync already has 
process communication capabilities.


So here is my current idea:

1) Create a listening socket in a running Thunderbird GUI. This socket 
would listen for OpenSync messages, and act accordingly.

2) Convince OpenSync to talk to this socket, instead of OpenSync's 
normal sub-thread/sub-process


I still have only limited knowledge of OpenSync, so I don't know:
- how to convince OpenSync to talk to the Thunderbird socket, instead of 
to an OpenSync plugin.
- which messages in which format to send or receive
- how to do this in Thunderbird


Any comments / help / hints / etc on this would be most appreciated.


/Henrik