Re: Extensions Infrastructure Work

[ecyrbe <ecyrbe gmail com>]

2011/6/23 John Stowers <john stowers lists gmail com>

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 11:48 +0200, ecyrbe wrote:
> thank you john for the bits of history of the design.
> i do know about server programming, as in fact it's my job to make
> high load servers in c++.
> i also understand the design better and the solution you try to
> provide.
>
> as i said. you can make the server lightweight inside the shell, i
> don't think people would complain as this would make it a lighter
> solution than a separate daemon.
> The problem with a separate daemon, is that you end up using a process
> to do nothing 99% of the time. integrating it in the shell would make
> it :
> - leightweight -> you only add a listening port to gnome-shell.
> - integrated -> you don't need to add a dbus api to control extension
> enabling/disabling
> - easy to implement -> you only have to use libsoup asynchronously, no
> threading use
> - no memory overhead -> it's integrated in the shell , you don't have
> to allocate a new stack for it
>
> so, why not integrate it? why would people complain ?

Cool. As an engineer you probably also understand that one does not
always start with the perfect implementation.

Pragmatically the separate process HTTP server is not bad for a first
go.

I'm still not convinced a process that is sleeping 99% is a big deal. It
should be swapped out and take no resources.

John

My point of view about a separate process vs integrated one is not (only) that sleeping 99% of the time is bad.
it's that for users that don't use extensions (or even not wanting to update them), you have a process launched that do nothing all the time when you don't need it.

For me a process is not only cpu resource , it's also memory used, system wide monitoring etc... i don't think a daemon http server is an easy path to take.
But once taken, if you can make your job easier, do it, that's why i'm suggesting the integration in the shell,

This way you would (i think) have less poeple complaining about a daemon running for nothing when they are not using extensions.

if i can be of any help to jasper to implement this in the shell, i can  take some time to make a patch for review. 
i'm not suggesting for jasper to do it alone, i'm willing to help if he wants.

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