This is the README file for MAPIROPS compiler

About MAPIROPS

mapirops is a compiler that builds a stack designed to pack and unpack MAPI operations (Rops) and MAPI content. This technology is the core of OpenChange protocols implementation and is a candidate to the replacement of the existing MAPI buffering implementation relying on Samba. The mapirops compiler aims at providing a similar approach but with different outcomes.

First it makes use of its own description language while implementing a grammar similar to Samba IDL files and in particular to the existing OpenChange MAPI IDL. Secondly, it implements a specific set of (compatible) keywords and primitive types chosen for this OpenChange language offering an easy migration path and reduces the overall effort.

Finally the compiler is responsible for generating code that automatically builds and processes MAPI buffers. The immediate benefit in having MAPI content as a buffer is the introduction of a semantic and physical distinction between content and transport. This offers an immediate solution working around existing NDR limitations with MAPI, such as:

deep recursion issues
MAPI is not NDR encoded
stateless and context agnostic
string encoding depending on context (and specified codepage)

Note that many of the mapirops library files responsible for pushing/pulling content are derivated from existing Samba dcerpc client library code, but current headers do not acknowledge that. This will be fixed in forthcoming commits!

Requirements

check
python-pyparsing
libpopt-dev
libtalloc-dev

Structure

bin/ This directory contains embedded waf
build/ This directory contains the auto-generated source and object files
build/mr/ This directory contains C files auto-generated from *.mr IDL files
mr/ This directory contains all mapirops IDL files
mapirops/ This directory contains the mapirops compiler

mapirops/mapirops/MAPIRopsParser.py is the file where the BNF is implemented.

Build Instructions

    ./bin/waf configure build

Run Testsuite

    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./build/lib
    ./build/mapirops_testsuite

Testing the compiler

    ./mapirops/mapirops.py --file=mr/oxcstor.mr --outputdir=/tmp --mapi-gen
    Generating /tmp/oxcstor.h
    Generating /tmp/oxcstor.c

    less /tmp/oxcstor.{c,h}

When run with the --debug option, mapirops will display the content of the .mr file after it is processed and parsed.