Apple this week released updated versions of developer tools designed to boost acceptance of its Rendezvous zero-configuration networking software in the Windows and Linux developer communities.

At the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple announced new versions of both the Windows Rendezvous SDK, and the source code to Rendezvous for use with POSIX-compatible operating systems, including Linux and FreeBSD. The source code is available under Apple's Apple Public Source open-source license.

Apple also showed off Mac OS X 10.4, or "Tiger," at WWDC. Click here to see what the developers at the show think of the new operating system.

Rendezvous is a zero-configuration technology designed to be compatible with the requirements of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Zeroconf Working Group, and is used to enable automatic discovery and configuration of compatible devices on a network. Although used by network devices such as printers and file servers, Rendezvous is also used by software developers to deliver automatic discovery of clients on a network, for example by allowing instant messaging or file sharing clients to find each other.

In addition to developer tools, the Windows release includes an Internet Explorer plug-in that allows users to discover local Rendezvous-compatible FTP and Web servers, and a printer setup Wizard that will discover and print to Rendezvous network printers, including those attached to AirPort and AirPort Extreme wireless base stations via USB ports.

The source code now includes Java libraries, allowing Rendezvous to be called from Java applications running on Mac OS X, Windows and POSIX systems.

This article was first published on eweek.com.