[avahi] Newbie question

[Trent Lloyd]

Hi Ravi,

On 13/08/2008, at 4:37 AM, Ravi Desai wrote:

> Trent Lloyd <lathiat at bur.st> wrote:
>> Generally speaking, Avahi is used more directly by developers of   
>> applications and desktop software to integrate this functionality.
>>
> Allright.
>> While some ability to use Avahi directly (by creating static  
>> service  advertisements, and using the command line tools to browse  
>> for  services, as well as some of our more complete examples) - it  
>> is best  actually used inside the context of other programs that  
>> already added  Avahi support.
>>
> Okay, So if an application does not support avahi, then we use avahi  
> only for the advertisement of the service?

Well if it does not support Avahi natively you have a couple options

  - Yes you can publish a service using either /etc/avahi/services/  
static service files, or using 'avahi-publish-service' tools
  - You can use something like service-discovery-applet which knows  
about lots of service types and will open programs for them.
  - You could write a tool, such as bssh which is like a middleman  
between launching the app and mDNS

Of course maximum benefit is provided when applications have native  
support.

>
>> There is a list of such applications here:
>> http://avahi.org/wiki/Avah4users#SoftwareMakinguseofAvahi
>>
>>
>> For advertising your printer, there is some patches available now  
>> in  CUPS for Bonjour which can be used with our bonjour (dns_sd)   
>> compatibility wrapper.  It is also possible to do this manually  
>> but  that is quite difficult.
>>
> This is in vanilla CUPS?

I think it is now.. I'm not sure.. google?

>
>> Generally - you are best using some directly supported programs.
>>
> Allright, thanks.

No problems!

Regards,
Trent