Re: Getting libgnome* into shape

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 01:04:09PM +0200, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> And yes, you can reuse everything through C APIs, but it adds a lot of
> complexity to users (lots of libraries you depend on, etc) and to app
> developers, since you depend on the releases of several libraries, which
> may be developed at your same pace, or be a PITA to try to catch up with
> the latest released versions. Doing it via well-known, standardized
> methods (Bonobo), is easier for developers, and makes applications have
> a lot of extra functionality.

I'm not sure I believe this.  Even with bonobo, if a new feature is added and
you depend on that feature you need to get a new version of bonobo or
whatever moniker or other technology you're using.  If an interface is added
same thing.  If an interface is changed same problems as with C api.

In fact, adding a method in a C api is possible safely with full binary
compatiblity, but it gets weirder with CORBA.

Some of these problems can get worse.  Such as a moniker changing it's
syntax, because you get no warning, no error.  Things will compile.  But they
won't work.  With C at least you know that something changed because things
won't compile.  You know what changed and where are you using an old version
of the API.

Dependencies are exactly the same.  If you think about how shared libraries
work, you can do the SAME stuff without corba with just a C api.  Mostly
because that's how you're gonna implement it underneath anyway.

> Also, on the GNOME core applications level, having all as components
> will allow us to replace any part of the GNOME core without affecting
> other parts of the desktop. This will make GNOME an easy to maintain and
> extend desktop.

All we need is a set of well defined interfaces.  Now corba has the advantage
of being transparent accross processes and stuff like that.  But it does not
solve any problems related to compatibility with versions.

I like component models (and I like bonobo).  But they should not be thought
of as solving things that they don't solve.  Plus here we are talking about
what to use in libgnome*.  Use of bonobo-config is going to ONLY going to
require every app to run a bunch of init code, launch oafd and gconfd (a
reason why I'd have to for example stop linking gdm with libgnome*) and init
bonobo and get some monikers.  All for being able to use a key in about 2
places in libgnome, which most apps aren't going to use.  And this is
especially a drag for small applications.  Say an app like a calculator.
Frankly gcalc is about at a level where it doesn't need to many other
features.  If I can launch it without any of those things being inited
and daemons started things are going to be much faster.  And I don't see
why gcalc should use bonobo, bonobo-config, whatever.  But if we use the
current setup it WILL be started, needlessly.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Originality is undetected plagiarism.
                       -- Dean W. R. Inge