[Adium-devl] Global proxy settings?

[Chris Forsythe]

On Feb 28, 2007, at 11:38 PM, Viksit Gaur wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> Thanks for the prompt responses.
>
> @Evan - Right, I know that Mac OS X has a number of network  
> "Locations" which can be changed at will, and can have proxy  
> settings associated with it. But, consider a scenario where you've  
> connected to a VPN. Now, I go to locations -> My VPN Location, and  
> can select a system wide proxy, perhaps an HTTP at port 80. But,  
> this proxy might be unfriendly to IM connections, this being of  
> course, dependent on the whims and fancies of people who run this  
> particular proxy - perhaps even blocking connections to known IM  
> servers.
>

In my experience you can usually get around unfriendly networks like  
this with multiple solutions which are a lot simpler. My previous  
email about an stunnel works well in some situations, or even just an  
evdo card to get around the mess entirely.

> Another issue is of using different proxies for different  
> resources. I'm not too familiar with the internals of advanced  
> proxies in use today, but I've come across a couple of cases where  
> I need one proxy for a web browser to access public web resources/ 
> Library access, and another for IM/IRC, for reasons I'm not really  
> aware of. Also, some places provide auto configuration files which  
> can differ across networks/resources. This makes using a global  
> proxy (systemwide) cumbersome, because of the need to manually keep  
> editing stuff. Oh, and what if you're on a network where you don't  
> need a proxy for IM, but do for other stuff? (A hypothetical  
> situation)

I have a hard time believing that more than a very small subset of  
our users are running into this problem. Is there any reason why this  
could not be put into a third party plugin?

>
> With the solution I'm proposing, you can have separate profiles for  
> Adium, that may or may not utilize the system wide settings - the  
> choice is up to the user, of course.
>
> Another important factor is that there is no interface to set a  
> common proxy for ALL accounts  on an Adium instance. So, if you've  
> got 6 accounts, and you want to flip back and forth between "System  
> wide proxy settings" and "No Proxy", you need to either manually go  
> and flip the check box on each account, or disable proxies from the  
> System wide network settings.

The usage you describe here could also be taken care of with seven os  
x locations, with one being "no proxy".


> IMHO, it would be a more elegant solution to have some flexibility  
> for this on the Adium level.
>

I'm not seeing how this is "more elegant". Could you explain how this  
would be "more elegant"?


Chris