Comment 109 for bug 507089

Comment on attachment 334117
Add ldap_create_filter

I'm not convinced by this solution.

If I understand it correctly, then this is trying to make our API the same as OpenLDAP's version. So depending on the set-up of the (Linux) system, we could be using either the OpenLDAP library, or our own. We don't know what is in OpenLDAP's library, nor have will we have done extensive testing in it. If we get crashes or strange results, we may not even realise that we're using OpenLDAP's library. This would make support very difficult. I think this is what Mark was saying in comment 9.

Given that we ship this library in Thunderbird, intending that Thunderbird is going to use this library, then maybe we should consider re-naming the library when we ship it within Thunderbird. This idea is from a similar approach Firefox took with SQLite in bug 513747.

So for instance, we could ship libmozldap60.so etc where we build LDAP as part of Thunderbird. Hence, changing the name should resolve the conflicts we're seeing, and ensure that Thunderbird runs with what we intended.

The LDAP c-sdk could still default to libldap60.so, and if building with the system LDAP c-sdk, then we could still use libldap60.so. If Linux distributions want to use the system LDAP for shipping Thunderbird, then I would expect them to verify/handle bugs with LDAP, especially if it isn't the LDAP c-sdk that we're shipping with Thunderbird.

Obviously we may still want to move the two sets of LDAP APIs closer together, but I'm not convinced doing it as a result of this bug is the right thing to do. For example, it really does feel like ldap_create_filter should be in the c-sdk, and therefore maybe it needs adding to OpenLDAP's version, not removing from ours.

If I've misunderstood things, then please correct me.