Re: Bug#76717: 1.10alpha3 compiles against OpenLDAP 1 but not 2

[Michael <mi...@st...>]

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> 
> I can compile 1.0alpha3 without any problem on my Debian 2.2
> ("potato") machine (this is OpenLDAP version 1) but, on a future-2.3
> ("woody") machine, which has OpenLDAP 2:
> [..]
> I've read the archives of the mailing list and noted the thread
> "compiling against OpenLDAP 2.0.7" last month but I'm pessimistic: it
> seems there is no known solution.

There were two patches posted to the list earlier (December 2000?).
One of them (Konstantin's patch) even had support for LDAPv3 binds
and search continuations but is not ready for prime time yet.
web2ldap already contains code to abstract from the differences of
python-ldap built against OpenLDAP 2.0.x and do LDAPv3 binds (see
module ldapsession).

> Is is incredible that OpenLDAP 2 is still not supported.

There are so many incredible things out there...why bother with
python-ldap? ;-}

Serious: One of the main problems is that the OpenLDAP 2 API is
quite different. They dropped support for the old RFC1823 API
heading to LDAPEXT-API (Internet Draft). The other C APIs like e.g.
Netscape are quite different too (e.g. with setting options, SASL
and SSL/TLS). I did not manage to build against a recent version of
the Netscape SDK (which is a pity since it's the only thread-safe
LDAP C SDK out there).

> Is the software dead?

David Leonhard does not have the time to contribute anymore. I'm not
a C programmer myself. Therefore I can't help with the C part
(except excessively testing it).

Feel free to jump on in.

> Is there another Python-LDAP solution?

You might find some discussion about Sascha's SWIG-based approach in
python-ldap-dev list archive.

Another approach would be to build a completely new python-ldap
module maybe implemented mainly in Python with CPU intensive BER
en-/de-coding done in C (or optionally pure Python like the
cPickle/Pickle approach). The API design could be derived from the
Internet-Draft for a Java API which is still heavily discussed on
the ldapext list. But this would be a lot of ASN.1-related work and
I do not have enough unpayed spare time for it.

Again: Feel free to jump on in.

> <troll>Should I program in Perl?</troll>

Yes, probably. ;-}

Ciao, Michael.