| 1 | Dolda Connect - README |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Introduction |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Dolda Connect is a peer-to-peer file sharing program, designed around |
| 6 | the Direct Connect protocol. It is written in a fashion that is |
| 7 | intended for flexibility and easy extension. It currently only |
| 8 | supports the normal Direct Connect protocol, but support is also |
| 9 | planned for the ADC protocol, and it can most likely be made to |
| 10 | support a great deal of other file sharing protocols as well. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | Extensibility |
| 13 | |
| 14 | Dolda Connect is built around a client-server model, in the way that |
| 15 | there is a server (daemon) program carrying out all the actual |
| 16 | file-sharing work, and a number of client programs that connect to the |
| 17 | server in order to command it and display its status. The interaction |
| 18 | between the client and server is carried out using a well-defined |
| 19 | protocol, making it fairly easy to write new clients for specialized |
| 20 | tasks. It is worthy of note that the default configuration file |
| 21 | disables running clients over the network, for convenience of |
| 22 | setup. See the INSTALL file for details and instructions on how to |
| 23 | enabled networked clients. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | To make it easier to write new clients, a C library has been written |
| 26 | to make common functions easier, such as connecting, authenticating, |
| 27 | sending requests and parsing the responses. The C library also has a |
| 28 | wrapper module for GNU Guile, so that clients can be written in |
| 29 | Scheme. As of 0.3, there is also a Python module available seperately. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | None of these are documented (yet), but there are a number of examples |
| 32 | scattered around the source tree, so it should not be awfully hard to |
| 33 | figure out how to do simple things. If in doubt, just contact the |
| 34 | author. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Clients |
| 37 | |
| 38 | So far, the following clients are distributed along with the source |
| 39 | tree: |
| 40 | |
| 41 | * A Gtk2 based GUI, which loosely resembles a normal Direct Connect |
| 42 | client program. |
| 43 | * A GNOME panel applet for showing the status of current downloads in |
| 44 | progress. |
| 45 | * A Gaim/Pidgin chat plugin for chatting in hubs and writing private |
| 46 | messages (only for Gaim 2.0.0 and above). |
| 47 | * A command-line automatic downloader written in Scheme. |
| 48 | * A chat logger written in Scheme. |
| 49 | * A hub manager written in Scheme. |
| 50 | |
| 51 | The GNOME applet and Gaim plugin are somewhat experimental. Both work |
| 52 | fairly well, but they do require special care during installation, |
| 53 | since neither GNOME nor Gaim/Pidgin usually look for applets/plugins |
| 54 | in the directories where Dolda Connect gets installed by default. See |
| 55 | the files doc/INSTALL.applet and doc/INSTALL.gaim for further details. |
| 56 | |
| 57 | Installation |
| 58 | |
| 59 | See the doc/INSTALL file. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | Documentation |
| 62 | |
| 63 | Documentation is still rather weak, but it is getting better. Besides |
| 64 | the README and INSTALL* files, there are now manpages for the daemon |
| 65 | and its config file. For any information still not found, please do |
| 66 | not hesitate to contact the author. Any further documentation aside |
| 67 | from this README file is located in the `doc' directory. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | Credits |
| 70 | |
| 71 | Dolda Connect is primarily written by Fredrik Tolf. He can be reached |
| 72 | through the e-mail address <fredrik@dolda2000.com>. His homepage is |
| 73 | <http://www.dolda2000.com/~fredrik/>. |
| 74 | |
| 75 | |
| 76 | |
| 77 | This document was last updated 2007-10-15, reflecting release 1.0 of |
| 78 | Dolda Connect. |