Howard Chu writes: > So, what do folks think about reviving libldif as an exported piece of the > distribution? > Exporting LDIF parsing sounds fine. Hopefully compatible with existing libldifs (mozldap libldif and maybe very-old openldap libldif), though I haven't looked at either yet.

But.. I can't decide what I think about dependencies. The way OpenLDAP libs are split up in liblber and libldap is geting in the way, as usual. For an app without LDAP/networking, it can be annoying to have to drag in libldap and via that OpenSSL, SASL, which can drag in Berkeley DB, and I don't know what else, just to parse LDIF files. When they're all already installed I suppose it rarely matters much nowadays, but it may be a different story for maintaining/downloading precompiled packages. > From: hyc(a)symas.com > rmeggins(a)redhat.com wrote: > >> I think this could be accomplished in one of two ways: >> 1) Just have libldif return lists of struct berval* for the various data >> parsed. The caller would be responsible for turning these into LDAPMod >> or LDAPControl structures - the advantage is that libldif doesn't have >> to know about any of these higher level structures >> That sounds nice in making libldif almost standalone - needs only liblber. For that matter, if someone wants to get rid of that we could provide hooks for allocation and log functions. >> 2) Have libldif create LDAPMod and LDAPControl - I think this could be >> accomplished by having ldif.c #include<ldap.h> to pull in the >> definitions of LDAPMod and LDAPControl - would this be ok? >> Does this need libldap? Or will it be sufficient to tell the user that he should use ldap_controls_free() or functions he can copy&paste from libldap, so he can avoid libldap if he really wants to?

> Let's move this discussion to the openldap-devel mailing list. I'm > thinking (2) is OK but I'd like to hear from other developers / > potential users of this library. >

> Hallvard B Furuseth wrote: > >> Howard Chu writes: >> >> >>> So, what do folks think about reviving libldif as an exported piece of >>> the >>> distribution? >>> >>> >> Exporting LDIF parsing sounds fine. Hopefully compatible with existing >> libldifs (mozldap libldif and maybe very-old openldap libldif), though I >> haven't looked at either yet. >> > The original patch I proposed in > http://www.openldap.org/its/index.cgi/Software > Enhancements?id=6194;selectid=6194 is roughly compatible with mozldap. > >> But.. >> >> I can't decide what I think about dependencies. The way OpenLDAP libs >> are split up in liblber and libldap is geting in the way, as usual. >> >> For an app without LDAP/networking, it can be annoying to have to drag >> in libldap and via that OpenSSL, SASL, which can drag in Berkeley DB, >> and I don't know what else, just to parse LDIF files. When they're all >> already installed I suppose it rarely matters much nowadays, but it may >> be a different story for maintaining/downloading precompiled packages. >> >> >> >>> From: hyc(a)symas.com >>> rmeggins(a)redhat.com wrote: >>> >>> >>>> I think this could be accomplished in one of two ways: >>>> 1) Just have libldif return lists of struct berval* for the various >>>> data >>>> parsed. The caller would be responsible for turning these into >>>> LDAPMod >>>> or LDAPControl structures - the advantage is that libldif doesn't have >>>> to know about any of these higher level structures >>>> >>>> >> That sounds nice in making libldif almost standalone - needs only >> liblber. For that matter, if someone wants to get rid of that we >> could provide hooks for allocation and log functions. >> >> >> >>>> 2) Have libldif create LDAPMod and LDAPControl - I think this could be >>>> accomplished by having ldif.c #include<ldap.h> to pull in the >>>> definitions of LDAPMod and LDAPControl - would this be ok? >>>> >>>> >> Does this need libldap? Or will it be sufficient to tell the user >> that he should use ldap_controls_free() or functions he can copy&paste >> from libldap, so he can avoid libldap if he really wants to? >> >> > I would prefer this approach - it would be most convenient to have the > LDIF parsed into LDAPMod and LDAPControl structures - for those (very > few?) apps that will want to use libldif standalone, it's easy to free > LDAPMod and LDAPControl structure data. > I think we could split the problem in two: 1) low-level parsing into arrays of bervals (in libldif?)

2) higher-level parsing in LDAP* structures (belongs to libldap, since needs at least the declaration of those structures). This level would delegate parsing to libldif, and simply deal with arranging data into LDAP* structures. I understand this approach would probably be in constrast with Rich's need of parsing into LDAP* structs from within libldif, and in any case to avoid the need to link libldap... The only alternative I see is to have libldif include ldap.h and act as a standalone library. All in all, libldap does not need to depend on libldif for turning LDIF into LDAP* structs (a client would). So libldap may need libldif for low-level dealing with LDIF data - but note: ./libraries/liblutil/fetch.c ./libraries/liblutil/ldif.c ./servers/slapd/slapadd.c ./servers/slapd/slapcommon.c ./servers/slapd/bconfig.c ./servers/slapd/back-sql/config.c ./servers/slapd/x.diff ./servers/slapd/overlays/auditlog.c ./servers/slapd/overlays/retcode.c ./servers/slapd/root_dse.c ./servers/slapd/back-ldif/ldif.c ./servers/slapd/back-ldap/config.c ./servers/slapd/controls.c ./servers/slapd/back-monitor/log.c ./servers/slapd/entry.c ./servers/slapd/main.c ./clients/tools/ldapexop.c ./clients/tools/common.c.orig ./clients/tools/ldapsearch.c.orig ./clients/tools/ldapmodify.c ./clients/tools/common.c ./clients/tools/ldapsearch.c ./include/ldif.h currently it doesn't; only clients call ldif_* functions. So deciding that libldif depends on libldap, and not vice versa, would be compatible with current arrangement. >>> Let's move this discussion to the openldap-devel mailing list. I'm >>> thinking (2) is OK but I'd like to hear from other developers / >>> potential users of this library. >>> >>> p.