pactester for Windows

[Manu Garg]

Lately, I have been getting some queries for "test pac files on
windows", "pactester for windows" etc in website access logs and
emails. Compiling pactester on Windows, though possible, is quite a
complicated process. So much so that it's almost impractical to ask
users to do so. Since it's a perl script, packaging it for Windows is
even more difficult. To avoid packaging difficulties of perl code and
now that pacparser is there, I think it makes sense to implement
pactester using pacparser. That's exactly what I did in last couple of
days -- implemented pactester in C using pacparser library.

I have compiled it for Windows and uploaded zipped binaries on
pactester downloads page:
http://code.google.com/p/pactester/downloads/list

Also to simplify things and as an added bonus to pacparser users, I
have decided to distribute this version of pactester (implemented in C
using pacparser API) along with pacparser from next release. Thanks to
open source that I can do that :)

Cheers,
Manu
--
Manu Garg
http://www.manugarg.com
"Journey is the destination of life."

[Manu Garg]

+pactester, +pacparser for wider audience.

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 9:18 PM, mdgrkb <mdg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, Manu.

Hello there,

>
> First of all, thank you very much for posting this Windows version of
> the PAC Tester. I was fearing I would have to install a Linux box in
> order to run the utility, for I don't have any Linux box around right
> now. Fortunately, I found this version and it already pointed me to a
> parenthesis mismatch, which is great (Y).
>

I am glad that you found pactester useful.

> Next thing I tried was a URL using the MMS protocol, that is mms://,
> but PAC Tester output was "Not a proper URL".
>
> I am aware the MMS protocol is being discontinued by Microsoft.
> However, there still are some customers that use it extensively, so I
> was wondering if you are planning on adding MMS protocol support for
> the PAC Tester.
>

Regarding supporting mms:// protocol, I think it doesn't make much
sense to check for protocol. I have checked in some changes (for both
versions of pactester - C and perl) to drop protocol verification
completely. You can see the diff here if you are interested:

http://code.google.com/p/pacparser/source/diff?path=/trunk/pactester.c&format=side&r=92
http://code.google.com/p/pactester/source/diff?r=28&format=side&path=/trunk/pactester

These changes will go in next release. I have not scheduled it yet.
May be some time in first or second week of September. In the meantime
you can use existing pactester with '-h' option. For example something
like following works:

pactester -p examples/wpad.dat -u mms://www.some-mms-site.com -h
www.some-mms-site.com

Protocol verification happens only if you don't specify host explicitly.

> Thank you very much.
>
> Mario

[Mario D.]

Hello, Manu and pac team.

 

Well, actually there is a very simple workaround I used, and its replacing "mms" with "ftp"for all the pac file.  Then I could successfully test it using an ftp:// URL instead of mms://.

 

The reason I need to discriminate for the MMS protocol is that I need the client to use a different port for the proxy, which is 1755, as opposed to port 8080 for all other protocols.

 

Thanks and best regards,

 

Mario