Ring compatibility

[KingMob]

About

Ring 1.11.0 has recently been released. This discussion is for exploring whether, and how, to support new additions/changes to the Ring spec.

Websockets

There's new protocols for ws in Ring. Unfortunately, websockets lacked a spec for a long time, so every server/lib implemented its own solution, and Aleph is no different.

Questions

1. Is it worth supporting? - Tentatively, I'd like to say yes, because interop is good in general, but since every existing websocket implementation differs, interop is more of a long-term goal. Existing ws users won't be able to swap servers/libs without rewriting their code.
2. What's the effort involved? - We need an analysis of the websocket code to get an estimate. Other than re-arranging the namespaces, I haven't used the ws code in 3 years, so I'd welcome any volunteers. Tentative issues I see are: a) impedance mismatches with Ring's async model and Aleph's, b) wanting to handle Netty ByteBufs as well as j.nio.ByteBuffers, and c) getting the new protocols to work with Netty channels and/or Aleph conns
3. Where does it fit with other priorities? - Given (1) and (2), what priority is this?