Re: kermit and tramp?

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (K. )]

Horsley Tom <Tom...@cc...> writes:

>> Does one send a kermit command to the remote end, then send an escape
>> char to Kermit, then tell the Kermit to send (receive) the file?  Hm.
>> Maybe the current file transfer mechanism needs a little bit of
>> tweaking to allow this.
>
> I haven't thought about it much, but I sort of envision defining
> "sessions" as kermit scripts. The local emacs would run kermit
> on the local system as a subprocess, feeding it the session script
> argument. The session script would do all the connecting, logging
> in, starting remote kermit, etc with the kermit scripting
> capabilities. It could start the remote kermit in server mode and
> the local kermit script could then use the kermit INPUT command
> to read commands from tramp and act on them.

Hm?  This sounds as if you need to implement in Kermit lots of things
that Tramp already does reasonably well.  I'm not sure that this is
the right solution.

Tramp executes a lot of different shell commands during normal
activity.  Even if you don't use filename completion.

So the only thing I really need is:

(1) How do I get a shell prompt from Kermit?
    This goes into a special connection function.  Look at
    tramp-open-connection-rsh and tramp-open-connection-telnet for
    some examples.
    Probably it is enough to start Kermit, then send "telnet
    otherhost" to it and then do like tramp-open-connection-telnet
    does.  I don't know how to open other kinds of connection from
    Kermit.

(2) How do I transfer a file with Kermit, once I have that remote
    shell prompt?
    This would have to go in tramp-handle-write-region (for sending
    the file) and tramp-handle-insert-file-contents (for receiving
    it).

In particular, what is NOT the right way is to start Kermit for each
file transfer.  That seems way too expensive.

But maybe I have misunderstood your idea.  Maybe the hint to INPUT
(which I don't know) means that it is like a shell prompt?  If I
understood right: is it now clearer why it doesn't make sense to make
an extra command prompt for Tramp?  Tramp sends commands to a remote
shell.

kai
-- 
Silence is foo!