[omniORB] How to create a reference to a "well-known" object?

[Chris Newbold]

This is a repost of a message I sent a couple of days ago, but which
I never saw appear in the digest. Apologies if it is a duplicate...

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A system which I am developing needs the ability to bootstrap itself
knowing only the host and port for a master server. For various reasons,
the main one being that this is an embedded system, we're not using
a naming service.

With omniORB 2.8 I implemented this by giving the implementation object
a "well-known" object key and having the client create a reference to
this object from scratch a-la the genior utility. The client "knew" the
"well-known" key and the repository id for the object and was given the
host and port through other means.

Aside from being non-portable, this worked just find.

I'm now in the process of upgrading to omniORB 3 and was pleased to
see that the POA provides a portable way to create an object key and
to activate an object using that key.

However, I haven't found any corresponding tools for the client side
which I could use to construct a reference or IOR from scratch. The
genior tool seems to have gone away, too. Creating a reference from
scratch must be different now, since the name or id of the POA must
be encoded...

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to approach this?

-Chris