Windows Interop

[Henry B. Hotz]

On Jan 11, 2007, at 3:22 PM, Howard Chu wrote:

> Kai Blin wrote:
>> On Thursday 11 January 2007 19:42, Henry B. Hotz wrote:
>>
>>> Windows does have a SASL API.  It's layered on top of the SSPI, and
>>> msdn documents the calls themselves.  I would assume that they work,
>>> at least for email clients.
>>>
>>
>> Are there any apps out there that use this at all? As far as I can  
>> tell, SSPI itself is only used by a handful of applications. The  
>> SASL api seems to be quite new, and used on server platforms only.
>>
>>
>>> Anybody got any information or examples or pointers at all on using
>>> the Windows API?  I don't find anything google'ing for the routine
>>> names, except people as confused as we are.
>>>
>>
>> If you can point me at a Windows app using this, I'll look at  
>> implementing this API in Wine. I'll be able to tell you a lot  
>> about it afterwards.
>>
>
> For a number of reasons (anyone following the embrace/extend/ 
> extinguish testimony on groklaw?) even when a native Windows API  
> exists, we've chosen to only support portable APIs if the parallel  
> exists. Thus, our Windows builds of software use Cyrus libsasl and  
> OpenSSL, not Windows SSPI. We use OpenLDAP's libldap, not the we- 
> claim-it's-LDAP-honest API that Windows provides. In general I  
> think this is the wiser course of action because it lessens our  
> support burden, among other things.
>
> -- 
>  -- Howard Chu
>  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
>  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
>  OpenLDAP Core Team            http://www.openldap.org/project/

Doesn't that make it harder to build your products?

In the Postgres case wouldn't that mean that you need to first build/ 
install/configure KfW, and Cyrus SASL before you could build Postgres  
for a native Windows client?  That seems like a pretty tall order.  I  
chose SASL instead of GSSAPI for this project because I (mistakenly?)  
thought SASL was natively available on all the target platforms.   
Granted I don't do Windows myself, but I didn't want to create those  
kinds of problems.

For an open source project I would think the support burden of  
requiring lots of ancillary installs would be significant.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
Henry.B.Hotz at jpl.nasa.gov, or hbhotz at oxy.edu