I recently replied to a post on the NUG from a user who was wondering why PPP doesn't seem to work in Mach-O applications. This brought something back up to my attention that I had forgotten: Mach-O and Linux applications don't support PPP at all in REALbasic.
You can use PPPConnect, et al as much as you want, they won't do a thing -- they're no-ops under the hood.
REALbasic has been compiling for Linux and Mach-O for quite some time now, and this is the first time anyone has even noticed that this functionality is missing. That makes me wonder just how important is it to support. I mean, if no one has noticed this for six months to a year, just how often is it ever being used?
Heck, I recall there being a bug with the Win32 PPP implementation that rendered it useless and no one reported that for about 8 months as well. Yeesh!
So, for those of you out there reading this who are programmers -- when's the last time you put in support for PPP in your application? Or do you just assume that all your users will have broadband connections, or only use your application while already online with dial-up?
For myself, I've never put in any code to support PPP with my own applications (incuding the REALbasic Remote Debugger Stub, or Project Manager!). I am responsible for the PPP implementation under the hood... but I've never once had to use it for anything aside from testing.
in my world (.net business app world)... one requirement is usually an always connected environment... :: shrugs ::
I don't know the last time I have heard of someone using PPP
I know of a handful of people who use PPP with REALbasic, but all of them are on Classic Mac, which leads me to believe they're not too cutting edge when it comes to technology. They may think that typewriters are still a bit too fancy. ;-)
I thought working on a Mac was supposed to be cutting edge and elegant? :P
I'm using PPP right now :( Dang dialup. I'm getting a whopping 6k per second downloading the hundreds of mailing list messages I missed out on before ;)
What about PPPoE? Do VPN connections not use a PPP interface? Why exactly isn't PPP supported?
It's the "oE" part that's important. PPPoE is over Ethernet, so it doesn't use the regular PPP interface (you can basically assume the network is always up with things like DSL connections).
As for why PPP isn't supported on Linux and Mach-O is because the system support for it is horrible. So I pushed it aside for later with good intentions of implementing it, but it fell off my radar until I saw it on the lists. Oops!
Ah, I see. I'm sure there's probably more important stuff to be done - I wouldn't worry too much about it! If you find yourself having to delve into the SystemConfiguration framework to fix it, you could rewrite the NetworkInterface class based on the framework while you're there! I'd like to see that very much. ;)
Forget that about implementing a better NetworkInterface class, I see it's already on your wish list: http ://ramblings.aaronballman.com/index.php?p=119
The PPP stuff for Mach-O won't be too bad -- if push comes to shove, I can write a shim for OpenTransport and just use the Classic implementation. It's Linux that I'm worried about. But I figure that once I figure out how to do it for Linux, the Mach-O implementation shouldn't be too bad.
And yes, the network interface stuff is certainly on my wish-list. :-)
As for ppp on linux, I would just look into using WVDial or something related, no matter what ppp setup the user has.
The other major linux ppp option is Dial On Demand, and that dials whenever a packet is sent to the ppp0 interface.
Last, but not least, some people might have ppp set up as a service, so "/etc/init.d/ppp start" might be the command. I would have a RealBasic VM Setup which asks the user how to connect when an application requests it.
Thanks for the tips Alex! I'll be sure to take a look into it.
If it'spossible to enable PPP in Mach-O apps by a OpenTransport workaround, please do!
I'm not entirely certain OT will work in the relatively near future. It's been unsupported for a few years now by Apple, and once the MacTel boxes come out, I think OT won't be on them.
I compile apps for Mach-O and sell them. I have quite some customers who complain not being able to start a dialup connection from within the app.
I would love if RB2006R3 would support PPPconnect again in Mach-O apps. And of course the other PPP commands too.
@Tom -- you should enter a feature request for it. But to be entirely honest, I don't see PPP becoming a priority any time soon unless there's some large hue and cry for PPP that I'm totally not seeing.