Moving to Mercurial - Proposals for the LDAP code and its effect on autoconfig (MCD)

[Follow-ups set to mozilla.dev.planning][Repost due to incorrect 
newsgroup names]

This post includes several sections:

- Background
- Proposal
- Effects
- Comments

== Background ==

As many will already know, following the core Mozilla codebase move to 
Mercurial, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird are also planning on moving to 
Mercurial soon (http://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:HgMeetingNotes), this 
will be in a new comm-central repository.

One issue that needs resolving is the location of the LDAP code. There 
are two many parts that are used, currently located (in cvs) as follows:

mozilla/directory/c-sdk - the main c-sdk for LDAP
mozilla/directory/xpcom - xpcom wrapper around the c-sdk

There are also other mozilla/directory/* directories and files relating 
to the LDAP sdk.

== Proposal ==

The current proposal is:

1) Leave mozilla/directory/c-sdk (and related directories) development 
in cvs (until such a time it is wished to move it).

2) We can then either: Import snapshots into the Mercurial repository 
similar to NSS/NSPR or obtain a version via cvs and an appropriate 
static tag.

3) Move development of mozilla/directory/xpcom to Mercurial located in 
the new comm-central repository (the old code would remain in cvs just 
to allow continuning support on the 1.9.0 builds).

4) Remove the capability from core to build the LDAP code (both c-sdk 
and xpcom).

== Effects ==

- The autoconfig code in extensions/pref/autoconfig will no longer be 
able to support LDAP (I think across any app).

- Firefox and xulrunner will not be able to include LDAP functionality 
(this is a currently not included by default, only as a compile time 
option - and I'm belive it doesn't work on xulrunner).

- Development of the c-sdk can remain in cvs and move to a separate 
Mercurial repository if/when the developers wish to do so.

- Development of the xpcom wrapper will be the responsibility of 
Thunderbird/SeaMonkey, which I believe it has been for quite a while now.

== Comments ==

See 
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/MCD,_Mission_Control_Desktop_AKA_AutoConfig 
for more info on what autoconfig does.

The proposal would mean that Firefox/xulrunner would loose the 
capability to be compiled with LDAP functionality for autoconfig.

Currently SeaMonkey and Thunderbird would also loose the LDAP 
functionality for autoconfig. I have only taken a brief look at the 
code, and from that I expect we may be able to rewrite the ldap module 
of autoconfig so that it could be built from within the new comm-central 
repository and overlaid into the core code.


Comments welcome, expect this to happen as soon as we are ready to 
transfer into the new repository, we haven't got a timescale yet, but I 
would expect in the next couple of weeks.

Standard8