Re: bonobo, gnome-vfs, and libefs

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

I disabled the building of the efs module in gnome-vfs entirely for
now (by commenting lines in Makefile.am), since it was not compiling.

If anyone would like to re-enable it, please first make it compile,
and find a way to fix the dependency problems.

Michael Meeks <michael@helixcode.com> writes:

> Hi Maciej,
> 
> On 24 Aug 2000, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > Right now, bonobo and gnome-vfs effectively have a circular dependency
> > because gnome-vfs uses libefs and bonobo uses gnome-vfs. Yes, I know
> > that technically libefs is a separate module. But when you make binary
> > packages built in the normal way, bonobo will have to depend on the
> > gnome-vfs package and vice versa.
> 
> 	Dude; all these dependancies are optional, and there is no
> particular need to compile the efs support into gnome-vfs; please simply
> add --disable-efs=yes to the spec file for gnome-vfs. This is the easiest,
> cleanest and most simple solution.

Yes; optional circular dependencies are actually _more_ insidious,
because it's easier to not notice that they are circular
dependencies.

> > 1) Make bonobo stop importing libefs through cvs magic; instead, make
> >    it use and depend on the libefs module, which would be built and
> >    installed separately.
> 
> 	I'd prefer not to have to distribute libefs separately, also we
> are discussing whether to continue libefs development or whether to switch
> to libole2.

In that case, the value of the efs module in gnome-vfs only becomes
more dubious.

> > 2) Move the efs gnome-vfs module into bonobo; gnome-vfs modules do not
> >    need to be distributed with gnome-vfs to work, examples include the
> >    search: module in medusa, and the help: module in nautilus.
> 
> 	But wait; surely this then adds a gnome-vfs dependency to bonobo
> that it currently does not have. I don't like the sound of that.

I notice that the optional bonobo dependency on gnome-vfs was disabled
in configure.in for now. Is that permanent, or is it possible bonobo
might once again use gnome-vfs someday (either the same way as the
disabled one, or to implement other moniker types)?

In any case, I'd still rather not have gnome-vfs depend on Bonobo.

> > 3) Remove the efs gnome-vfs module entirely.
> 
> 	It doesn't need removing, just disable its building in your
> package generation system.
> 

This isn't an issue just for packages. Developers who build gnome-vfs,
then bonobo, then gnome-vfs again get a different result the second
time.

 - Maciej