2 Aug
2022
2 Aug
'22
5:43 p.m.
On Aug 2, 2022, at 11:25 AM, Brian Angus
<brian.angus(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I like that idea, although I do wonder how many "real" applications would
really need, want, or even try to support DECnet directly in these modern times? For the
terminal server case that I am initially interested in building, CTERM and a few network
diagnostic tools would keep me very satisfied, Adding in some file transfer capabilities
would be simply awesome.
The latest (T1.1) has basic DAP support. I should do a V1.1 release; it's been long
enough to leave beta stage.
It would be really useful even if some of these
functions were only exposed through internal PyDECnet sub-commands instead of being
available system-wide. I've been happily using PyDECnet for a couple of years, but I
haven't yet upgraded to your new test releases, and I haven't kept up on what all
is included in your future plans? Regardless, I suspect that any somewhat easier way to
keep a version of DECnet running on Linux with even the minimal set of tools would be
appreciated by many around here. How do you think the performance would be with CTERM
written in Python?
Cterm in Python should be fine. It's been on my "to do at some point" list
for a while now. The main difficulty is that Cterm is a large and complicated protocol.
The earlier "RMterm" suite of protocols (it's really four, wrapped in a
single object number) would be a good first step. For one thing, most systems support it,
and a few like RSTS support nothing else.
PyDECnet T1.1 has a new program API, and this generation is finally sane and clean enough
to be readily useable. I created a pair of Python wrappers for it that are vaguely
socket-like. It would not be hard to do a C API library but that hasn't been done
yet. The API is documented in the "doc" subdirectory, take a look.
As for future plans, I don't have any specific ones listed right now. I can think of
a couple. More applications -- make sure DAP is complete enough, perhaps mail, remote
terminal, even more obscure ones like DTR and Netcpy.
A more ambitious effort would be Phase V...
paul