[ftputil] Keep-alive functionality, release 2.1b2

[Stefan Schwarzer]

Hello!

After sending the announcement for ftputil 2.1b
(http://codespeak.net/pipermail/ftputil/2006q1/000072.html), I
noticed that the keep-alive functionality (i. e. preventing FTP
server timeouts) didn't work as expected. I was able to fix the
code for the "main" FTP connection, inactive cached files and
files that are open for reading. However, I didn't find a way to
make the keep-alive feature work with files opened for writing.
(I also asked on comp.lang.python, see
http://groups.google.de/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/297d4e4a43c162c/2b8b1b5518e54b49?lnk=st&q=group%3Acomp.lang.python&rnum=1&hl=de#2b8b1b5518e54b49 ,
but got no answer.)

After having implemented the current partial solution (available
in ftputil 2.1b2 at http://ftputil.sschwarzer.net/download ), I
wonder if it's really worth the effort (two methods with one
resp. two parameters and an additional exception class).

What do you think? Should I reduce the software complexity and
thus remove the keep-alive code since it doesn't work in all
cases, or would you prefer to keep the code in future releases? I
remember that some folks had run into timeout problems in the
past, but how severe are such problems (was it possible to work
around them)?

Thanks for your opinions!

Stefan