Re: [PATCH setup 11/11] Use wininet for fetching URLs in direct (non-proxy) case (DO NOT APPLY)

[Jon Turney <jon dot turney at dronecode dot org dot uk>]

On 02/05/2017 20:29, Åke Rehnman wrote:
> > > One thought though, why not let wininet take care of file:// URL's as
> > > well? Or actually don't try to parse the url string at all and just pass
> > > it down to NETIO_IE5 unfiltered? The advantage is setup would be able to
> >
> > I'd be happy to look at a separate patch to do this.
> See proposed incremental patch. Have a look, give me your thoughts.
> > > handle what ever protocols wininet has. Also letting wininet taking care
> > > of file:// url's would let the user install from a local network
> >
> > I'm pretty sure I've done that in the past, so I think it already
> > works.  The form of file: URL required might not be strictly correct,
> > though, (I think file:////server/pathname/ ?)
> Seem to work with \\server\share_name\path or //server/share_name/path
> now anyway

Thanks for the patch. So there are a few separate things here:

* Pass unknown protocols to wininet

This seems a fine idea, but isn't what this patch does.

* Allow wininet to handle file:// URLs

I'm a little bit concerned that there may be current uses which rely on 
the incorrect parsing we do of file:// URLs to work.

Otoh, this should fix the file:// URL format we currently mishandle, so 
is probably worth doing.

* What to do with non-URL (i.e. pathname) addresses?

Perhaps WinInet can handle these, but assuming it does, is there a good 
reason to change from using NetIO_File()?

There are also some associated UI issues, in that we give no clue that a 
pathname is acceptable as a download site, and pathnames and file:// 
URLs are presented terribly in the download site list.