Copyright (c) 1996,1997 Doug MacEachern, OSF Research Institute

You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.

The DCE-Perl package provides an OO Perl interface to the DCE security APIs.

The perl implementation is somewhat different from the C API: o It takes advantage of perl's namespace packages, dropping prefixes such as sec_rgy_, sec_login_, etc.

• Stuctures such as the login_context or registry_context are held in blessed objects which know what namespace to look for methods in, DCE::Login, DCE::Registry, etc.
• Output arguments that are not needed by the underlying C functions are not passed into perl method calls, rather, they are returned by the method as a list. However, anything that is needed for input that will change outside of the method call such as a sec_rgy_cursor_t will be passed into the method call as a reference.

The interface is not complete, but here is the breakdown so far:

• DCE::Registry The sec_rgy_ functions This class is-a DCE::rgybase where constants from rgybase.h live
• DCE::Login The sec_login_ functions This class is-a DCE::login_base where constants from sec_login_.h live
• DCE::ACL The sec_acl_* functions
• DCE::Status This module attempts to help make sense of status codes
• DCE::UUID Misc uuid functions

KNOWN BUGS

TODO

• Better documentation and examples
• Complete sec_rgy_, sec_login_ and acl interfaces. If there is a function missing you'd like to see implemented or would like to implement and contribute to DCE-Perl, drop a line.

For comments, questions, bug-reports, announcements, etc. subscribe to the DCE-Perl mailing list <dce-perl@lists.csupomona.edu> by sending mail to: <majordomo@lists.csupomona.edu> with a body consisting of "subscribe dce-perl".

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

Some of this work is based on DCE.xs written by: David J. Bianco <d.j.bianco@larc.nasa.gov>

Extra thanks to Paul Henson <henson@acm.org> for proving the mailing list and lots of patience, bug spotting, fixing and ideas while DCE-Perl was getting on its feet.

Enjoy,
-Doug MacEachern <dougm@osf.org>