Re: gnome-socket API proposal

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Tue, 14 Sep 1999, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> Creating a new .so file for stuff like -lgnomenet might look like an
> appealing idea.  Until you realize that this adds (depending your
> setup) for each shared library you link with about 6 open calls.
>

Well yeah, but the overhead is only for a small set of applications. If
you add it to libgnomeui, you make libgnomeui bigger and that impacts
_all_ applications. That may not seem like much if it's just this sockets
stuff, but we have to draw a line or we end up with all kinds of bloat in
gnome-libs. Do you want to replace libgnomeui with a giant
Bonobo-print-XML-glade library? What are the criteria we are going to use
to ensure libgnomeui doesn't get any more bloated?
 
I think the sensible criterion for inclusion in libgnome/libgnomeui is
"almost all apps would potentially benefit from this code." This network
code will only be used by maybe 10% of apps. gnome-dns is used less than
that even. That's why I was proposing that we remove it, along with lots
of other stuff (see libgnomeui/TODO).

If you don't like that criterion, which criterion should replace it?

Havoc