Support MessagePack / MsgPack

[ably-sync-bot]

We need a clear list of things to be done to include MsgPack in the .NET SDK, so that we can make an informed estimate of including MsgPack.

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task by Unito

[tomkirbygreen]

Linking to ~ancient MsgPack issue (now closed) from 2017.

[ably-sync-bot]

➤ Sachin Shinde commented:

I had worked on this one in the past, had done some research as to what needs to be changed. We had one draft PR, which was closed (without merging). So, this is the current situation right now, for MSGPACK.

• Currently msgpack is being disabled by conditional compilation flags in the code, reason being old dotnet msgpack library not being stable enough.
• As a part of the draft PR, I updated all MSGPACK disable references in proj and properties file after updating the msgpack library to latest version ( hell of a tedious task ).
• After updating references, tests that referred to msgpack started failing, so only thing needed to do was fix the failing tests that uses latest version of msgpack (https://github.com/ably/ably-dotnet/pull/494 ( https://github.com/ably/ably-dotnet/pull/494|smart-link ))
• After fixing all tests, there is going to be a need to remove all conditional compilation flags (just makes code look a lot dirty), this can be done as a part of refactoring.

[ably-sync-bot]

➤ Sachin Shinde commented:

I had briefed why compilation flags are not useful in the comment https://github.com/ably/ably-dotnet/issues/156#issuecomment-761574308 ( https://github.com/ably/ably-dotnet/issues/156#issuecomment-761574308|smart-link )

[ably-sync-bot]

➤ Sachin Shinde commented:

Personally I would recommend taking forward the work done in draft PR, it took some time to find the references, so it will save lot of time and we just have to fix the failing tests

[QuintinWillison]

Further thoughts from @tomkirbygreen ...

Re-enable MsgPack support

The delta-compression / binary encoded MsgPack support is currently disabled and needs to be reenabled. Doing so would be of immediate interest to customers such as the Unity folks who have been exploring the use of the Ably .NET SDK as a means of communicating high frequency sensor data.