Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] Proxy Testing Tool?

[Andreas Sewe <andreas.sewe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Scott,

> For everyone's info, there's been a long discussion of what appear to be
> HttpComponents-based proxy difficulties on this bug
> 
> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=422665

yes, I am aware of that discussion. AFAIK, we never arrived at real test
scenarios, though, which allowed us to open upstream bug, for example.

> ECF (used for p2) has the ability to disable the default
> HttpComponents-based provider and use an JRE URLConnection-based
> provider, which under some proxy use cases and configurations appears to
> work:
> 
> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=422665#c137
> 
> This comment references the documentation to disable the
> HttpComponents-based provider.
> 
> https://wiki.eclipse.org/Disabling_Apache_Httpclient
> 
> I'm not sure what Code Recommenders and the Automated Error Reporting
> uses of ECF/p2, but if it uses what p2 uses then it also will inherit
> the multi-provider support described above.

Code Recommenders and the Automated Error Reporting use HttpComponents
internally, either directly or through Eclipse Aether (in Code
Recommenders' case).

We use ECF *only* for our communication test, as we got the impression
that ECF is sometimes more successfully in traversing proxies. Our
communication test now uses ECF and HttpComponents and "calls home" on
*both* channels. If one or both messages get through, we have a data point.

Now, the question is how to interpret these data points. Unfortunately,
it doesn't look like we can make blanket statements like "NTLM never
works". It's rather "it depends". The question is just "on what?"

> From the ECF point of view, if anyone is able/willing to do proxy
> testing, and suggest, implement, and test changes or other workarounds
> to ECF, then contributions are welcome.  I can't speak or act for the
> Apache HttpComponents project, however.

I don't thing we have reached the "provide a patch" stage just yet; we
are still at the "pinpoint the problem" stage. If anyone can make of the
data more than I can, any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Best wishes,

Andreas

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