Re: gnome-vfs dependency for bonobo (was gnome_mime vs. gnome_vfs_mime)

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

Pavel Cisler <pavel eazel com> writes:

> Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > 
> > > Simple or not, sounds like a really bad thing to do given the fact that
> > > all along our intent was to deprecate the gnome-libs version.
> > >
> > > It's pretty obvious that if there is more than one mime type detection
> > > mechanism in GNOME, everyone looses.
> > 
> > It does not matter if the databases are compatible, which it looks
> > like they are. 
> 
> Seems to me reading this and other posts that you are trivializing the
> code that implements this a bit. Most of the logic goes way beyond
> "parsing the databases". It has been improved quite a bit compared to
> the original in gnome-libs. 
> 
> Folks do care about how well this works, judging by the volume of bugs
> filed about wrongly identified exotic file types, etc., so a technically
> sound solution seems to be in order.

I fully agree on this topic with Pavel.

Guys, please keep in mind that Eazel spent a lot of work in improving gnome-vfs
and that way back we all agreed that we'll move the MIME stuff into gnome-vfs
and deprecate the version in gnome-libs.

What I really do not understand is why someone like Miguel, who always talks
about consistency and code reuse really proposes to do such a duplication.

Please, if Helix Code and Eazel cannot find a compromise on whether Bonobo
should depend on gnome-vfs or vice-versa, please move the MIME code out of
gnome-vfs into some gnome-mime module and let both bonobo and gnome-vfs
depend on it.

The MIME stuff in gnome-libs is deprecated and will be gone in GNOME 2.0, so
if you start merging stuff back there, this'll cause a lot of headaches both
for people who're using the libraries and for the GNOME 2.0 transition process.

Btw. it'd be nice if people, especially new contributors, won't get the
impressions that they always need to "fear" that the project the worked on for
months may suddenly become deprecated just because some guy doesn't like it.

Both gnome-vfs and bonobo are essential pieces of GNOME and neither of them
is "more valuable" than the other.

-- 
Martin Baulig
martin gnome org (private)
baulig suse de (work)