[freenet-dev] The new plugin : MDNSDiscovery

[Florent Daignière (NextGen$)]

Hey!

	This WE I got around coding a new plugin for freenet :
	MDNSDiscovery. It advertises fred's services on the local network.
	Namely _freenet._udp (the node), _fcp._tcp (FCP), _http._tcp (Froxy)
	and _telnet._tcp (TCMI). MDNS is also known as ZeroConf (see [1])
	or Bonjour/Rendez-Vous in apple's world (see [2]).

	So far no FCP client is known to be listening for zeroconf
	advertisement ; maybe their authors should consider doing it so
	that they could "automagicaly" discover FCP servers.
	I have filled in several tickets on mantis (see [3]).

	MacOSx users should now see a bookmark for fproxy in Finder,
	under Network Servers.

	We could imagine lots of applications for that plugin including
	"easy peer swapping capabilities with neighbors" ;) I suggest to
	people interested in such functionality to express their
	interests in a new thread on @darknet-tools.

	The plugin runs fine for me with the testing version of freenet
	and follows 1.4 strict java compatibility. Would someone object
	to me bundling it within the installer when 1017 is out ? Of
	course as it "advertises" freenet on the local subnet, there would
	be an "adequate" warning ;)

	I have also created a wiki page dedicated to its installation
	[6]

NextGen$

PS: I have used jmdns [4] to do it, and would recommend python addicts
to use avahi [5]. I know that having several MDNS stacks on the same
host isn't a good solution but I don't regard using JNI to access DBUS
to talk to avahi as a realistic option.

[1] http://www.zeroconf.org/
[2] http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/
[3] https://bugs.freenetproject.org/view.php?id=1179
[4] http://jmdns.sourceforge.net/
[5] http://avahi.org/
[6] http://wiki.freenetproject.org/MDNSDiscoveryPlugin