[Pipet Devel] chat

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Brad Chapman wrote:
> 
>     I really just don't see the need for a central server in the
> manner that you describe. Can you explain why you think it is better
> to funnel all connections through a server?

In the proposal I just sent, I outlined an approach whereby every version of
vsh has the ability to share its filesystem/storage with others.  This means
we can set up private, peer-2-peer connections OR public, central servers.

I think the system in the proposal does NOT mean that EVERYTHING is mediated
through one server.  EVERYTHING is mediated through whatever server has the
filesystem/storage, which can be one big one on the Internet, a peer's server,
or YOUR OWN LOCAL server.

> Lets just think about a simple conversation between two peers.
> The way I am envisioning it we can have a simple two way connection:
> 
> vsh1        vsh2
> -----       -----
> client --> server
> server <-- client
> 
> If we put things through a server we've got:
> 
> vsh1       central      vsh2
>            server
> -----      ------       -----
> client --> server
>            client ---> server
>            server <--- client
> server <-- client
> 
> I don't understand why we want to introduce this overhead. It seems
> unncessary, and like a lot of extra programming to get this central
> server going :)

In the proposal, you can have it either way: ANYTHING CAN BE ANYWHERE :-)

> That is the problem with building Makefiles by hand, you are almost
> guaranteed to have to hack them on another computer. It is nice that
> we will be able to try these things out on multiple computers, so
> hopefully we can get rid of some of the multi-platform differences
> early in the game. gms is almost nearly under the control of an
> autoconf/make build now, so hopefully things will be a lot nicer soon
> and everything will 'just build' in the proper gnome manner :-)

Cool.

Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
                      |                                  |
                      |        BIOINFORMATICS.ORG        |
                      |           The Open Lab           |
                      |                                  |
                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
                      +----------------------------------+