LCFG Client V3 Update

During 2012-2013 we put a lot of effort into improving the LCFG client code base. After extensive testing it has now been deployed to all users. Below are details of the main changes:

Changes

The main changes in the V3 update are:

Refactored code

There has been a big cleanup to improve reliability and maintainability. For example, the code now has the warnings and strict pragmas enabled throughout.

Generic profiles

Support has been added for the new "generic" profiles. This means that a client can use a profile with a name which does not match the current hostname. This is useful for roaming clients and it also means that multiple clients may use the same profile (note that this makes spanning maps useless). Further changes are necessary to other LCFG client libraries so this is not yet fully available. Developers should read LoadingResources for details.

Improved configuration handling

New configuration file support and improved command line options

Removal of hard wired file paths

rdxprof can now be run as a normal user - bug#42. Some tools, such as qxprof, still need to be updated to make full use of this new feature.

Reworked network handling

The client no longer hangs when the networking cannot be successfully initialised - bug#50, bug#146

Regular lookup of server addresses

The client can now handle DNS changes for servers - bug#27, bug#40

Testing

There is a completely new test suite so that it is safer to make changes and test deployments to new platforms.

Documentation

The full API has now been documented to make it easier to develop new code.

For full details of the original project plan see the Informatics devproj site.

For an in depth discussion of the changes as they happened see the project blog.

The complete changelog can be viewed through the LCFG websvn.

-- Main.squinney - 2014-02-27