Subj : synchronet needs a rewrite
To   : tidux
From : Digital Man
Date : Tue Apr 30 2019 10:31 pm

  Re: synchronet needs a rewrite
  By: tidux to All on Tue Apr 30 2019 08:22 pm

 > Synchronet currently hard-depends on libmozjs 1.85, which will not run on
 > 64-bit ARM.

That may be true (I don't know), but I *do* know that libmozjs 1.8.5 (and sbbs) runs just fine on my 64-bit rPi3. Maybe that's just because it's running a 32-bit OS (Raspbian). I'm not sure if anyone has tried running sbbs on a 64-bit ARM OS.

 > This is because the old version of mozjs makes incorrect assumptions about
 > 48-bit vs
 > 64-bit address spaces in NaN handling, which aarch64 and sparc64 violate.

Interesting. We patch libmozjs for other ARM-target issues as well during the build process. Perhaps it could be patched for that issue as well. If you legitimately want to report an issue with Synchronet, see http://wiki.synchro.net/howto:support for details.

 > Newer mozjs
 > versions are written in C++ rather than C, which means rewriting any piece
 > of the software
 > that touches JS.

While upgrading the version of mozjs has been and will be painful, it has never involved what I would call a "rewrite". Most of the Synchronet source that uses the JSAPI is already in C++, so not biggie there.

 > Additionally, the SSH library on the Win32 version is
 > dangerously out of
 > date, offering zero cipher overlap with modern OpenSSH versions.

Chasing SSH algorithms is a constant, never-ending task. See http://wiki.synchro.net/faq:tcpip#ssh_algo for details.

Synchronet currently uses Cryptlib v3.4.4 which was the latest and greatest version up until just last month when v3.4.5 was released and of course we'll be upgrading to that version.

 > Finally,
 > the number of
 > systems that understand cp437 natively is plummeting, and so the UI should
 > probably offer a
 > UTF-8 option.

The number of BBS terminals that understand UTF-8 is incredibly low (like maybe, one or two). Anyway, I'm sure we'll get to it some day and I don't anticipate it requiring "a rewrite".

All that said, you just come across like a whiny a-hole. If you want to have an actual conversation about these things, I suggest you take a different approach and also take it to one of the official Synchronet support message areas (hint: this ain't one of 'em).

                                            digital man

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