[Bug 304889] Re: Does not use system proxy settings

[Nicolas-dufresne]

When I first started working on proxy in Telepathy there was two ways
this could be fixed. The quick way would have been to implement it in
every single network oriented application. To do so you just have to
find another project that match licence, copy paste some code do basic
testing and your done. But the fact is that this method had never
worked. The big portrait is that every software interpret the
configuration differently (mainly due to ambiguities in the
configuration) or has incomplete implementation.

I was bored of that, so I took the long road, that one that can benefit
all and eventually ensure that network oriented application don't have
to care about proxy since it will just work. This road is to get proxy
support to be handled by libraries like GIO and libproxy. In contrast to
what Felipe says, having to update things into distribution to get
things to work is completely normal, and takes time. We can't implement
features in already existing versions and we can't maintain hundreds of
different branches of every projects so the distro does not have to
update.

Getting this in the next Ubuntu release has nothing to do about doubt,
it's about priority. If 100% of the targeted users where using HTTP
Connect proxy, all this would be updated much faster. But the reality is
that HTTP Connect users represent probably less then 1% of the users, I
don't think it's enough people to justified the risk and the energy
required to get those new features in so quickly. What you should do
instead if you have the knowledge and time is to test those things,
discuss and report precise bugs and create testimonial for distro that
says it's working.

Finally, Telepathy Butterfly (the MSN backend) has full HTTP/HTTP
Connect/SOCKS support. I don't know where Felipe got that it does not
work for MSN because it works very well.

What Felipe is confusing in his comment is the support for proxy in
Telepathy against bugs in the libproxy implementation. Yes HTTP Connect
is considered an unsafe choice in libproxy. HTTP Connect server (the
commercial ones) has a large reputation of implementing filters and port
blocking that usually reduces your connectivity. We are working hard to
make it possible to trigger this choice in libproxy without the risk of
reducing your connectivity, but we have hit an internal design issue
that needs more time.

Felipe also often ignore the miss-adapted configuration tool we have in
Gnome. This tool, based on old Netscape Navigator configuration, is
undocumented and present ambiguities. On this, some people also have
long term solution like a new storage for GSettings/GConf or even an
integration with software like NetworkManager or ConnMan. But let me
reassure you that as soon as the previously mentioned bug in libproxy is
fixed, I'm also going forward with shorter term fixes that should make
it work better.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/304889

Title:
  Does not use system proxy settings