Comments needed: mozilla-sync needs a redesign

[Henrik /KaarPoSoft-2]

mozilla-sync needs a redesign.


Currently, mozilla-sync is a threaded plugin to OpenSync.

It will initialize a private instance of XPCOM and access address-books
etc. as it works as an OpenSync plugin.

Now, this approach is broken by design, since the
Mozilla/Thunderbird/XPCOM functions are not thread safe.

If the Thunderbird GUI is running in another process, all kinds of
disasters may happen because of the lack of thead/process safety.

Even worse: the blueZync GUI (an extension to Thunderbird) runs OpenSync
(in it's own thread) so here, for sure, we have a problem due to the
lack of thead/process safety.


One possible solution would be to implement some process/thread in
Thunderbird to listen for custom messages from a modified version of
mozilla-sync.

I.e. to keep the mozilla-sync threaded, but instead of letting it access
XPCOM data directly, it would implement some proprietary protocol to
talk to a proprietary listener in  Thunderbird.

This seems to be an unnecessary complication, as OpenSync already has
process communication capabilities.


So here is my current idea:

1) Create a listening socket in a running Thunderbird GUI. This socket
would listen for OpenSync messages, and act accordingly.

2) Convince OpenSync to talk to this socket, instead of OpenSync's
normal sub-thread/sub-process


I still have only limited knowledge of OpenSync, so I don't know:
- how to convince OpenSync to talk to the Thunderbird socket, instead of
to an OpenSync plugin.
- which messages in which format to send or receive
- how to do this in Thunderbird


Any comments / help / hints / etc on this would be most appreciated.


/Henrik


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[Daniel Gollub-3]

On Friday 23 October 2009 08:25:29 pm Henrik /KaarPoSoft wrote:

> 2) Convince OpenSync to talk to this socket, instead of OpenSync's
> normal sub-thread/sub-process
>
>
> I still have only limited knowledge of OpenSync, so I don't know:
> - how to convince OpenSync to talk to the Thunderbird socket, instead of
> to an OpenSync plugin.
> - which messages in which format to send or receive
> - how to do this in Thunderbird
>

OpenSync plugins can be written as a seperated process, which is already
running. E.g. inside Mozilla. And communicate via FIFO

The plugin start-type is called OSYNC_START_TYPE_EXTERNAL - but AFAIK you
still need to use the OpenSync API, for proper communcation via this socket.

The only existing plugin-code running as external i could found is inside some
testcases:

tests/engine-tests/check_engine.c


-----8<-------
debug->plugin = osync_plugin_new(&error);
osync_plugin_set_name(debug->plugin, "mock-sync-foo");
osync_plugin_set_longname(debug->plugin, "Mock Sync Plugin");
osync_plugin_set_description(debug->plugin, "This is a pseudo plugin");
osync_plugin_set_start_type(debug->plugin, OSYNC_START_TYPE_EXTERNAL);
osync_plugin_set_config_type(debug->plugin, OSYNC_PLUGIN_NO_CONFIGURATION);


debug->client1 = osync_client_new(&error);
char *pipe_path = g_strdup_printf("%s/configs/group/1/pluginpipe", testbed);
osync_client_run_external(debug->client1, pipe_path, debug->plugin, &error);
---->8--------


Maybe this helps some how ... if you're interested in give this a try - let me
know. So we can build up a proof of concept up. We need something like that
anyway as reference implementation.

Best Regards,
Daniel

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