[Twisted-Python] Advice seeked on SMPP implementation

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

On Jul 3, 2010, at 7:23 AM, Yaroslav Fedevych wrote:

> If I'm going to make it internal to my needs, there's only issue of
> making it work and be done with it. But that's not quite a way I would
> like to do it; I would like to end up with an implementation which
> would be reusable and beneficial for the community as well, so that
> anyone would be then able to take this implementation and get his or
> her service an almost instant ability to talk SMPP (news via SMS?
> microblogging via SMS? ...)

That would indeed be cool :).

> Thus keeping in mind that SMPP by its nature is not entirely unlike
> your old instant messaging and mailing protocols, albeit geared
> towards mobile content, there might be some interfaces already in
> Twisted which I would need to implement before it becomes interesting
> to anyone else.
> 
> Can anyone give me some useful pointers on that?

There are some existing interfaces in twisted.words.im, which you can see here:

	<http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/browser/trunk/twisted/words/im/interfaces.py>

but they have not seen a lot of maintenance, and they date back to a much less awesome time in Twisted's history.  Still, there may be some small utility in implementing them, if for no other reason than to encourage them to become better documented and supported!

I don't have much advice as to *what* to implement, how to structure your code and such, but I do have some advice as to *how* you should go about it:

	1. put it up on Launchpad.  don't wait until your design is done; develop it in the open to solicit feedback.
	2. choose a nice, obvious name (might I suggest 'txsmpp'?)
	3. use test-driven development, so that your code is maintainable!
	4. join the 'tx' meta-project <https://launchpad.net/tx>
	5. when you are, of course, totally successful, write a success story and send it to <mailto:success at twistedmatrix.com>.

Hope that helps,

-glyph