Re: GNOME development tools; A more United future?

[Andrew Hill <andru treshna com>]

Hi Christian and others.

The probject I work on, with others, is BOND (building object network
databases)
which is a development tool and libary for GNOME.  I'd best give a
description
of what it does first so here goes. ... 


Bond seeks to greatly simplify the task of developing database
applications.  It
makes GTK widgets dataaware and points them to objects in a postgresql
database,
like tables, fields etc.  

In order to write your application you need to specify a .glade xml file
and a 
postgresql database to connect to. The postgrsql database needs to have
the 
constraints correctly set up.  BOND will use things like widget names,
labels, hints, 
layout and widget types to work out what the data source should be.
After knowing that it'll deal with all the managing that widget with its
callbacks etc.

The nice thing about bond is how quickly it is to write applications,
normally
about 95% of your application will work first time and then you just go
to and
make some widget names more specific, or add any additional callbacks or
triggers you may need.  It handles complex relationships and manages
those
horrible UI rules and systems which are a bitch to code. Like if user
clicks there
and then there then the data in this widget should refresh.

A typical main function for a programme written using bond would look
like this. This
would tell it to load the mainmenu window and initialise all its
callbacks. From there
the bond API would handle any other forms that would be opened from
inside there.

main(...)
{
	gtk_init(...);
	db_init("postgrsql init string");
	gtk_startup(...);
	dataroof_init();
	bond_formshow("mainmenu");

	gtk_main();

	bond_formclose("mainmenu");
	gtk_cleanup();
}

I dont want bond to become an annoying tool that takes the all power
away from the developer,
the developer still needs to be able to do low level calls on GTK. Bond
is ment to do you
all your donkey work but still allow you to get your hands dirty when
the need arises.

...end of rant.


At the moment I'm working for a 007 release(about 1 month away).  Which
is a 
major and complete rewrite from the last 006 release.  006 is a bitch to 
install and set up and is slow, buggy, and i have lots of other nasty
things 
to say about it.  I'm keen to hear peoples ideas on the project so do
speak up, I've got some cvs snap shots if people are interested.

I've moved completely away from ORBIT in 007, along with a lot of other
nasty dependences.  
This may seem like a bad thing on face value but I was having major
issues with speed, 
reliablity and easy of use.  If i was going to use orbit again it would
just be in the 
high end API with my C interfaces asewll.  Because bond is a libary I
havn't spent a great 
time on looking to get bonobo intergration.  It maybe better suited for
the applications 
that are written using bond, or doing a basic interferace to the high
end API.

In the long term I see bond been a critical part of gnome, and a libary
used for developing database applications.  I would like to see a huge
rich collection
of applications for both home and businesses that are available for
gnome.  

How this may fit in devtools, well how do you see it fitting in?.  Bond
is a libary
not a GUI application.  A front end to the libary to aid in developing
applications
could be useful.  Maybe intergration with glade, and some better GUI
debugging tools
may also be in order.  Like been able to run application and see at run
time where
widgets get there data from, and what call backs exist etc.  



Andru.



Christian Schaller wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I am currently redoing the devtools page on gnome.org. The page will
> from now on focus on highlighting the different development components
> available to GNOME developers. The page will be similar tot the current
> GNOME Office pages.
> (New draft: http://www.linuxrising.com/devtools/, will be moved to
> http://www.gnome.org/project/devtools as soon as its ready.)
> 
> The goal of the page is to increase the synergy effects and progress
> done on this front. In order to do this I will only profile applications
> which have developers interested in making sure the part of the package
> they are working on actually is able to be integrated with others
> through a clean API, preferably as a bonobo component.
> 
> The base for cooperating on this is already the GNOME devtools list
> where developers from a lot of GNOME devtools projects already
> participate including developers on gIDE, Anjuta, Glimmer, DevHelp,
> Glade and more.
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-devtools
> 
> So request that application authors who are interested in having their
> application highlighted on the devtools page reply to me with the name
> of their application(s) and also outline shortly how they long term see
> their application fiting into a wider development toolchain.
> I also ask everyone who isn't on the gnome-devtools list to please join
> it.
> 
> Christian
> 
> Please when replying to this mail only reply to me AND the devtools list
> so we don't flood peoples mailboxes more than necessary. This mail goes
> to the around 15 GNOME development tool related projects and list I
> found after searching for 30 minutes. I have a feeling there are even
> more :)