Beta support: MMS on chatty/mmsd on Modem Manager - help/testing wanted!

[kop316]

So while I am waiting for other things, I have been debating what makes sense as "next steps" for development. However, when you are a person of one, it's easy to just stay inside your head and not go anywhere. I say that to say there is a lot of traffic to this thread, so I was wondering if there are thoughts in logical next steps (besides Chatty integration, packaging, and upstreaming). Right now I have come up with a couple of ideas:

Modem Manager: having mmsd autoprocess SMS WAPs:
https://source.puri.sm/kop316/mmsd/-/issues/6

I think this makes a lot of sense. I originally didn't add this due to the fact that Chatty/purple-mm-sms processes SMS WAPs and hands them off to mmsd. However, I think this allows mmsd to be more autonomous, and makes it easier for higher level applications to build in MMS support.

Modem Manager: having mmsd support SMS:
https://source.puri.sm/kop316/mmsd/-/issues/7

I don't know if I like this idea or not. I can see it being useful, but I also see it as mmsd doing more than MMS (which there is use in keeping it MMS only), and then it becomes a question of should mmsd also support sending SMS too?

For lack of a better option, I'll throw it out there and see if others have different ideas too.

Would pursuing Issue 6 help with implementing MMS on systems that do not use purple-mm-sms? I read that you are having trouble reaching the ofono developers, would this possibly help/limit the need ofono integration?

> Would pursuing Issue 6 help with implementing MMS on systems that do not use purple-mm-sms?
(NOTE: this only applies to modem manager) Correct. If you do not use purple-mm-sms/chatty, you need to build your own monitor to look for SMS WAPs and then send the SMS WAP to mmsd. If I just add SMS WAP monitoring functionality to mmsd (which adding this functionality is not a lot of work, probably a day or so), than you will not need to worry about monitoring SMS WAPs in a seperate program. I think this makes for a cleaner abstraction for MMS with mmsd.

My original thought was that SMS chat program monitors incoming SMS anyways, so adding the functionality to send SMS WAPs to mmsd is likewise minimal. I also did not want some sort of race condition between an SMS chat program and mmsd (i.e. both see the same SMS WAP and try to do something about it). This was why I left this functionality out of mmsd and only in purple-mm-sms/chatty. However, after working on both sides for a bit, I think I was being too cautious. I think I will end up adding the SMS WAP monitoring functionality into mmsd and add a user option for if it should be active or not.

I was additionally wondering if I do Issue 6, then does it make sense to then bake in SMS functionality as well (Issue 7). I am not convinced I should do that. Right now I am thinking mmsd should only focus on MMS (it is called mmsd afterall), and SMS sending/recieving is much more straight forward with modem manager. But, I figured I should write it down and think about it anyways. If I did add it, it would be a user option as well.

> I read that you are having trouble reaching the ofono developers, would this possibly help/limit the need ofono integration?
Ofono is a seperate plugin in mmsd. While I do not use/test the ofono-plugin, none of my work should cause regressions on it (and if anything, the bugs I have fixed in the core should benefit ofono as well), and the plugin is compiled in by default. If someone has updates to the ofono plugin, I welcome MRs.