[sakai2-tcc] [Building Sakai] Google Summer of Code 2012

[Matthew Jones]

I think we'd need to clarify the goals then. It seems like webdav usually
works "most of the time" but it's always going to be very operating
system dependent and probably require constant maintenance. Many of the
"hacks" in DavServlet are done to present "bad clients" (like OSX) from
writing trying to write their hidden/properties files to the webdav system.
Someone actually has to enable a property on the client to prevent this,
when it seems like it should be a default at this point. [1] I'm sure
there's many other hacks that aren't standard that we'd want to avoid as
well.

And we probably need to require more Sakai setup requirements at the local
installation, but for many people who install Sakai, the same person is a
part time developer, system administrator and support person.

If we enforced the same Miltons requirements, we'd have much wider client
compatibility, but a much more complicated setup.

>From the Milton page:
"Recent testing (as of July 2010) shows that Win7 has good support without
any webdav specific patches, provided the conditions outlined above are met"
 Server implementation requirements

   - Your DAV webapp must have a root context path, ie "/". NOT "/webdav"
   etc
   - Must run on port 80.
   - Must have Digest authentication enabled
   - Must support locking, including the awkward lock-null support for
   collections
   - Must allow unauthenticated OPTIONS requests


The root context path seems like it would be a big one unless we forced
people to have a separate subdomain for their dav. Steve Githens tried to
do something quite similar with
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/KNL-640 and
that completely stalled out.

Or we we just say "use cyberduck" it works all of the time, but it's not
entirely free anymore (donationware).

[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1629

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 12:32 PM, Seth Theriault <slt at columbia.edu> wrote:

> Matthew Jones wrote:
>
>  Even if we pass the litmus it still doesn't mean it would work, which
>> seems like it's pretty discouraging. What would be the goals of this effort?
>>
>
> The goal of last year's effort was to simplify the support for WebDAV by
> replacing our "roll-your-own, based on Tomcat" DAV with something updated
> and modern. I still think that's a valid goal, although we appear to be
> exchanging one set of headaches for another soemtimes.
>
> WebDAV is easier for end-users to use than sftp, even if Cyberduck
> supports it. Forcing people to use Fuse or yet-another-client doesn't make
> for friendliness.
>
> Seth
>
>
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