Re: [Evolution-hackers] ESourceExtension and backends... "claimed" generic property ?

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristanvb openismus com>]

On 02/05/2013 10:22 PM, Matthew Barnes wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-02-05 at 17:22 +0900, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
> > Would it make sense to include some property on the base
> > ESourceExtension class ?
> >
> > For instance, an api such as 'e_source_extension_claim()' could
> > be introduced and called by the consumer of the given extensions.
> >
> > I.e. the file addressbook backend would "claim" the
> > ESourceBackendSummarySetup extension... clients (those clients
> > which actually created the backend), would then be able
> > to read this "claimed" property back after creating the addressbook.
>
> That seems to me like an awfully obscure corner case to justify adding
> APIs to the base ESourceExtension class.
>
> Maybe I don't understand what problem this is trying to solve.

In short, ESourceExtension adds api to backends... whether those
backends support the new APIs/configurations or not.

How is the client supposed to know if what they programmed in
the extension is actually being used ?

In the likely case that these extension apis see implementations
incrementally added over time in additional backends... client
code should be able to introspect at runtime whether the
configurations they've setup are being used by the backends
they've chosen, right ?

I know, we've discussed this already a few months ago, it just
seems like something essential to the extension API, you
tell the backend to do "foo" and you just don't know if that
backend knows about "foo" (yet) or not.

Cheers,
        -Tristan