Re: re: mc dav dev

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hi, Pavel!

> > It would be nice to develop a framework that would allow the same code to
> > be used either as a user-space filesystem for the kernel (like Sharity
> > Light) or as anapplication-level VFS, like GNOME VFS.  Perhaps GNOME VFS
> > could provide kernel interface at some point.
>
> Hmm, this is done with gnome libvfs. It is called uservfs(.sf.net)
> these days (used to be called podfuk).

I remember visiting the podfuk page before, but at that time I was
assuming that it's done on the shared library level, not on the kernel
level.

> Yep. gnome vfs is not multithreaded and that's bad. Someone should
>
> 1) clean gnome vfs up
>
> 2) rewrite mc to use gnome vfs.

3) rewrite uservfs to use gnome vfs (if I understand it correctly).

Sounds like a plan.  I'm ready to use gnome vfs in mc.  My only concern 
is portability and complexity of the build.  I'm not familiar with gnome 
vfs, but I believe that it's using glib-1.3.x, and glib-1.3.x uses 
pkgconfig, which is a binary, not a script.

Then a pour user of HP-UX or Solaris would have to go through the 
following steps just to get MC running:

1) Download, compile and install pkgconfig.

2) Download, compile and install glib of the right version that would work 
with gnome vfs.

3) Download, compile and install gnome vfs.

4) Download, compile and install GNU Midnight Commander.

Now consider that not everybody would want to create a separate directory 
for installing all that stuff.  /usr/local may be owned by root.  You 
would have to ask root three times to install some software before you can 
compile MC.  If MC doesn't work, then root would probably to remove all 
that stuff (pkgconfig, glib and gnome vfs).

Alone installing glib is a big problem for many new users (look how many
times I recommended using --disable-shared jsut to get them past shared
library problems), and now we are adding two other packages.

Even --without-vfs would not help completely, because glib 1.2.x and 1.3.x 
have different API, so pkgconfig will be required once MC switches to glib 
1.3.x.

Not making pkgconfig a script was a very bad idea in my opinion.  
Unfortunately, I have no time to argue with glib developers, especially
when the answer is likely to be "do it yourself".

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin