C.1 The Origins of the SMB URL

The idea of a URL scheme designed specifically for use with CIFS had been kicked around before, but it was Richard Sharpe of the Samba Team who finally pushed folks into digging a foundation and pouring concrete. Richard proposed the idea to the readership of the Samba Technical mailing list, and a lively discussion ensued. It took only a short while to work out the basic design of the SMB URL, and most of those involved agreed that the rough-draft plans were a good start. Richard then began work on a prototype implementation to be included in Samba's libsmbclient library, and yours truly started work on an Internet Draft for submission to the IETF.

In the broader CIFS community, however, the idea received mixed reviews. Some thought that a URL scheme for use with SMB was a silly waste of time. Others liked the idea so much that they started construction before the foundation was complete, building their implementations on little more than the nominal "specification" hammered out in the mailing list discussions.

So much for the standards process...

Fortunately, the early adopters were also CIFS-savvy folk, so as de facto standards go, the SMB URL isn't all that bad. At the very least it can be said that the known problems with the SMB URL are rooted firmly in the bedrock of the CIFS suite itself, and that the URL scheme doesn't do anything to make matters worse .