Re: Towards better OAF/Bonobo integration

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Maciej,

        Just to sign off on this publicly:

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> One key step that we feel would improve the consistency of the
> platform is to make all of OAF's IDL interfaces (most particularly the
> public Factory interface) inherit from Bonobo::Unknown. This is also a
> critical step to developing a future public CORBA API to OAF
> activation, another goal Michael and I agree on.
  
        Yes.

> In some ways, the best approach to achieving tight integration would  
> be to merge the two modules; it really does not make that much sense
> to separate activation from the rest of the component model. However,
> Michael and I are right now unsure of our ability to work well
> together within the space of a single module, given some of our past
> disagreements.

        Correct.
 
> So after some discussion I came up with this plan, which we believe
> would largely avoid the potential for massive argumentation while
> delivering many improvements to the platform. I think the plan
> outlined below is pretty good, and Michael said he would consider it
> over the weekend. He asked me to mail a write-up of the proposal to
> him and gnome-components-list.
 
        And I'm now happy with the proposal:
 
> * We would Bonobo::Unknown IDL interface from the libbonobo module to
> the oaf module.
 
        Yep.
 
> * The relevant GObject-based server and client convenience APIs would
> remain in libbonobo.
 
        Correct - and I'm concerned that this continues to be the case.
 
> * I would promise that I (or any of my successors as OAF maintainer)
> will never change the Unknown interface without the express permission
> of Michael (or his successor as Bonobo maintainer).
 
        Great.
  
> * All of OAF's IDL interfaces, public and private, would be changed to
> inherit from the Unknown interface.
> * All of OAF's IDL interfaces, public and private, would be moved into
> the Bonobo:: namespace.
  
        Great.

> * OAF would be renamed to bonobo-base to recognize it's role as part
> of the Bonobo component model.

        I'm not sure that this is realy neeccesary - but if you wish. I'm
only concerned that pressuere will be brought to bear to move stuff
wholesale into 'bonobo-base', and I'd like assurance that this will be
resisted wholesale - at least until such time as we could contemplate
merging fully more sensibly.

> * I'm not certain about this, but perhaps OAF interfaces that pass
> around CORBA_Object's could be changed to pass Bonobo_Unknown's. I'm
> not sure what level of breakage vs. benefit this would cause just yet.

        This is not quite so critical, certainly in C - the type safety is
a complete joke - and either way, we have a CORBA_Object factory currently
anyway. So let's just stick with Object.
 
> * Longer-term, OAF would provide a public CORBA interface to querying
> and activation in addition to the current C API (and perhaps someday  
> the C API might be deprecated, who knows).

        This is great.

        For pragmatic reasons, I have another request - that the ORBit2
typelibrary for the Bonobo/ namespace should be installed from bonobo:
which requires no real hackery really - just a note.
 
> Comments, anyone?

        Lets get going with the patching action - we all want to hit the
API freeze deadline of tonight ...

        Thanks for the summary Maciej,
 
        Regards,
 
                Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot