ietf-nntp Concerning Streaming

[Clive D.W. Feather]

greg andruk said:
>> If POST isn't streamable, then IHAVE shouldn't be streamable, yes?
> Yes. No.  Maybe.

I wouldn't object to the consistency.

> If the reason for POST being in there is the disruption caused by the
> spawn() function in NNTP 1.5.x, then it would also apply to IHAVE if
> batching hasn't been compiled in -- but you only need that for B News which
> I hope we can consider dead for this purpose.

I don't understand why people want POST to be not streamable.

I know that you can't send the data until you know whether the initial
command got a 340 or not, but that's not the issue. The question is
whether the client can send the next command after the trailing dot and
before getting the response to the posting. In other words, given the
sequence:

    [C] POST
    [S] 340 ready for post
    [C] From: someone at an.example
    [C] Newsgroups: misc.test
    [C] Subject: a test
    [C]
    [C] Test text
    [C] .
    [C] DATE
    [S] 240 posting accepted
    [C] GROUP misc.test

can the client rely on receiving a 111 line next, or is it possible that
the server threw away the DATE command, so that the next response will be
the 211 ?

If a server is likely to do something that might upset stdio buffering as
part of processing a POST, then it needs to be non-streamable. Is this
likely ?

> I don't see why LIST EXTENSIONS can't be streamable.  Yes, it would be kind
> of dumb to go ahead and depend on behavior the server hasn't confirmed yet,
> but that's also true of anything that changes the group context or article
> pointer, which is, well, most commands.

I seem to recall there was a belief that LIST EXTENSIONS might kick in a
new invocation of the server with extra modules loaded. Hence the desire to
make it non-streamable.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:  +44 20 8371 1138
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