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