Indy or ICS or ?

Question

Can any one tell me which is more stable? I know each has their own advantages and disadvantages. But which one is better for http, etc?

In my previous application I used indy9 but I wasn't satisfied with it, as I would sometimes get strange errors.

Can anyone recommend one?

Answer 1

I use Indy in a lot of projects. I used both 9 and 10 mainly as HTTP server and proxy. The projects get very intense traffic at times (HTTP). Indy never did let me down. It works very stable.

But I also had some "strange" situations where I had to dig deep to find the underlying problem. I also do not like the way Indy tends to handle a lot of things through exceptions. In general I like the ICS coding style more. But let me go to ICS.

ICS uses non-blocking sockets, while indy uses blocking. While non-blocking is ok and seems to be better at first sight, I found it irritating in a lot of situations. The problem is that the natural flow of the code gets lost because of the callback functions. This makes it harder to write procedural type of libraries. Furthermore I do not like how everything is handled through messages. For me it gets messy real quick when mixed with multithreading. And multithreading is mainstream these days.

So while I like the coding style and quality of the code in ICS, I prefer the simplicity of use and blocking mode of Indy. What you like more is up to you, but both libraries are mature and stable.

These are my two cents.