juergen.schmied@debitel.net wrote:
As for doing the 10k+ lines of coding myself, I have experience in (de)marshalling and network coding, spent many years doing it, it's more a matter of available time and learning the com wire protocols, neither of which are currently available to me. Here's to hoping someone is already working on it ;).
For local marshalling we could use our own protocol and even our own way of ipc if we don't try to mix processes with native and wine com-dll's. It com server is only interested in the result ;-). And isn't the com marshalling similar to the dce one? For networking - the dcom protocoll is documented (IMHO).
With COM, the other issue is that someone needs to look at the MS patents in this area. Mainsoft is telling people that they can't use Wine to port COM code, because Microsoft holds patents on some of the Vtable logic used in COM (and no, I don't have any more detail than that, this came to me third hand). I've also asked the FSF for help tracking this FUD down and refuting it.
The upshot of my comment is that it's critical that we use our own marshalling/ipc protocol.
DCOM is documented, and what's more it appears to be well documented, and what's more, it doesn't look as though the implementation will be particularly hard...
BTW, if there's anyone who wants to volunteer to attack this sooner, I think there are some corporate sponsors who'd be willing to kick in some beer money (okay, maybe we'd even spring for some *nice* beer, and a sofa to drink it on).
Jer