Uniform Proxy Settings

[Simon Andrews]

Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> Simon Andrews <simon.andrews at bbsrc.ac.uk> wrote: 
>> One suggestion to get around this would be to run a proxy on localhost
>> and make all proxy aware applications use that in their default
>> install. This wouldn't actually have to do any caching - just act as a
>> common point at which behaviour could actually be changed without the
>> cooperation of the programs.
> 
> Icky.

No arguement from me - however it's pretty analagous to the situation we 
shipped with NetorkManager installing bind so that DNS settings could be 
changed on the fly, so there is some precendent here.

>> We could then put hooks into NetworkManager to change the behaviour of
>> the local proxy so that it either sends its requests directly to the
>> internet, or routes them via a secondary proxy.
>>
>> This all feels a bit icky to me - but I can't think of a nicer way of
>> doing this which doesn't require the cooperation of the authors of
>> every proxy-aware application.
> 
> This is papering over the (very real) bugs in the applications (Yes, I do
> consider not getting and resetting proxy and other network settings
> transparently a bug), at a very real cost for all users.

The trouble is that any cleaner solution requires the cooperation of all 
application developers to implement.  Also, speaking as an application 
developer who writes network aware applications why the hell should this 
be my problem?  Surely the presence/absence of a proxy is something 
which should be handled at a lower level that the application.  My 
application doesn't care about the routing tables on your machine so 
long as my connections get through, so why should it have to care about 
whether you're running a proxy?

Simon.