[icedtea-web] RFC: add support in netx for using proxy settings from browser

[Omair Majid]

On 12/24/2010 03:31 PM, Omair Majid wrote:
> On 12/22/2010 07:40 PM, Dr Andrew John Hughes wrote:
>> On 17:34 Wed 22 Dec , Omair Majid wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> The attached patch makes netx (not plugin) behave correctly (or at least
>>> slightly better) when deployment.proxy.type is set to 3 (for
>>> PROXY_TYPE_BROWSER).
>>>
>>> With this patch, netx will parse the firefox preferences file to figure
>>> out the browser's settings and use that when trying to figure out the
>>> proxy to use for accessing a given URI.
>>>
>>
>> I think there could be better handling if the profiles.ini does not
>> exist.
>> AFAICS, it would print out a stack trace. We should handle that much more
>> gracefully. It's not really an exceptional event that the user hasn't
>> used Firefox before, but something we should account for.
>>
> Good point. I will post an updated patch to address this issue.
>

This updated patch takes care of it. If the preferences file (or the 
profiles file) do not exist (or are damaged), BROWSER_PROXY_TYPE_NONE is 
assumed and the user is notified:
  Unable to use Firefox's proxy settings. Using "DIRECT" as proxy type.

>>
>> Are you planning to use libproxy?
>>
>
> Yes, but it will not be required for using PAC files. I have a prototype
> done that can parse and use PAC files correctly without relying on
> libproxy.
>

During further investigation, it seems implementing some of the 
BROWSER_PROXY_TYPE_* options may be quite challenging. For example, 
BROWSER_PROXY_TYPE_AUTO looks up entries in gconf, attempts to use WPAD 
(and PAC) and even looks at <type>_PROXY and ALL_PROXY environment 
variables. Perhaps always using libproxy is the simplest and correct 
long-term solution (at least on linux).

Cheers,
Omair
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