Coyo wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 15:47:52 +0000
Mark Morgan Lloyd <markmll.fpc-pas...@telemetry.co.uk> wrote:
Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jul 2015, Coyo wrote:
I have read on the wiki and documentation that FreePascal does not
have any native support for socket handling, and that you need an
external third party library to have any support for it.
This is not correct. Of course Free Pascal has native support for socket
handling ?
I will link the wiki articles later to demonstrate the difficulty of using
sockets in FPC. However, I do appreciate the advice.
How do you import a unit/library in FPC? Is there a .deb package or something
that I install?
Most of what you need comes as part of FPC. There's a very rough split
between the Run-time Library (RTL) and Free Class Library (FCL), all you
need is the uses statement.
When compiling or distributing compiled FPC codebases that use external units
or libraries in FPC, how do you go about doing that? I failed to find documentation
illuminating how one goes about doing this. Any enlightenment would be
greatly appreciated.
Most of what you need comes as part of FPC.
I dislike object oriented programming, it makes something that should be
very simple, compact and portable to something more complex than it really
has to be. But that's just a personal preference. Thankfully, FPC lets me
use purely functional programming if I prefer to do so. Java and new Perl
force object oriented programming down my throat, and is part of the reason
I have a deep interest in FPC. I want to keep it stupid simple.
I prefer, when possible, to avoid using external dependencies, and to keep
all code in a single file. While I am not a supergenius coder or anything,
I CAN appreciate elegantly-written code. Compact source code and compact
binaries are something I can appreciate. Overuse or gratuitous use of
external libraries and dependencies disturbs me.
I'm afraid that you're going to have to get used to pulling in units
from the RTL and FCL, and some of these mandate using OO. If it gives
you problems then ask for help.
I don't mean to be irritable, but I've heard "don't reinvent the wheel"
far too many times, especially when defending centralized or dangerously
homogenous networks and systems, rather than multiple implementations
and diversity in network components and systems.
I would very strongly recommend against trying to reimplement a complex
protocol from scratch. You'll make the same mistakes that early
implementers made, and your code will be vulnerable to the same attacks.
One can argue over-reliance on a single implementation of a cryptographic
library, namely OpenSSL, is actually a security RISK rather than a benefit.
See: Heartbleed. ONLY OpenSSL-dependent applications, systems, and services
were affected by that programming failure.
Ditto.
The IRC bot I have now uses a shell script to invoke it, and establishes
the connection using netcat and standard input/output. I want to eliminate
netcat from being a dependency. I can worry about TLS and whatnot later.
If you're invoking netcat as an external program to handle your comms
you're doing something very badly wrong. Netcat (and equivalents such as
netpipes, i.e. hose/faucet) is great at what it does which is handling
scripted socket access, but you really shouldn't be using it as part of
custom code.
I'm used to Perl, Python and Ruby, which all have systems of making using
standard libraries trivial. C doesn't really have anything like that.
I don't much like seeing that, but I suppose the assertion is
justifiable since you usually need to specify both a .h file and the
name of a library. For FPC, you only need a uses statement, the linker
side is done automatically.
I would greatly appreciate a definitive answer on how to go about using
Synapse for things, since the wiki and docs I have found are either ancient,
inconsistent, unclear, or incomplete. I would be happy to update the wiki, if
you want me to.
If there's something that's giving you trouble in the Wiki please give
us a URL and tell us what the ambiguity or error is.
The reason I want to have sockets internal to FPC instead of using an external
tool such as netcat is because I want to use one of the core features of FPC,
namely portability of code. FPC has incredible code portability. It is trivial
to compile code for a huge selection of target platforms, and I would prefer
my code to be as portable as possible, and rely on as few dependencies as
possible. However, implementing an entire userspace TCP/IP protocol stack
in FPC is something I am NOT ready to do at this time, especially for a simple
IRC automaton. Maybe later...
Do not even dream about trying to implement an IP stack from scratch.
I've done that sort of thing for very specific purposes (e.g. a test
program that's trying to work out whether it's still our kit at the
other end of a modem link, or if somebody has replaced it with something
running PPP), and I'd probably have done far better by linking in code
from Slirp or equivalent.
--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk
[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
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