From: iang@cs.berkeley.edu (Ian Goldberg)
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 11:40:57 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Unix plugins for Netscape (Was: Calling other code in Java applications and applets)
In-Reply-To: <3185E5B6.3EE8@netscape.com>
Message-ID: <4masb1$uu6@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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In article <31887DD0.300F@netscape.com>,
Jeff Weinstein  <jsw@netscape.com> wrote:
>Ian Goldberg wrote:
>> 
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>> 
>> In article <3187209C.3E5B@netscape.com>,
>> Jeff Weinstein  <jsw@netscape.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >  It might be interesting to make a small plugin that just does some core
>> >stuff like gathering entropy, mod-exp, and related stuff difficult or too
>> >slow in java.  I mainly brought it up because people were asking about
>> >calling native code from java.
>> >
>> In an alternate universe in which I didn't have projects to finish, I may
>> be interested in doing something like this.  However, I haven't been able
>> to find information on how to write Unix (or preferably portable) plugins.
>> 
>> Any hints?
>
>  You can get the unix plugin SDK from ftp://ftp20.netscape.com/sdk/unix/
>
I downloaded this, and I notice you don't have a "makefile.linux".  Is that
just because no one's bothered to make one, or does Linux Atlas actually
not support plugins at all?  (Quickly checking the binary...)  I see that
Linux Atlas is still a.out.  Ick.  That would make supporting plugins
pretty tough.  If it were in ELF, things would be _way_ easier; in fact,
I'd probably say trivial (but that's just me).

I'd venture a guess that most people who have a Linux box sufficiently cool
to run netscape at all, have the ability to run ELF.  In fact, there are
probably a lot of people (like everyone who bought Slackware 3.0 or a recent
RedHat) for which netscape is the _only_ a.out binary on their system.

The reason I'm pointing this out is (obviously) because Linux is my main
development platform, and I'd like to be able to try writing plugins
for things like crypto and ecash.

   - Ian "Add me to the 'Make an ELF Linux binary!!!' list..."

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