Re: [PATCH] NM DBUS api documentation build system

[Marcel Holtmann <marcel holtmann org>]

Hi Will,

> > I must agree here. Something that generate the introspection is not
> > helpful at all. It is hard enough to keep external introspection XML
> > files in sync with the actual runtime introspection. 
> 
> Surely the glib binding generators create the runtime introspection from the 
> xml files?  That's the way the Qt bindings work.

no they don't. In the dbus-glib case you have the a pre-processing step
that uses the XML file to generate glue code. You attach this to a
GObject and then the bindings generate the runtime introspection from
the runtime information of the object. You could do it without the XML
file if you really want to.

> > Why should we have 
> > another thing to maintain. 
> 
> This thing makes the project more accessible, and could make existing 
> developers more efficient.  And I'm happy to maintain it.

You could also simply write down the D-Bus interface in plain ASCII
documentation. Seems to be working for other projects.

> > If you could generate the introspection files 
> > from within the source code, that is a different story. Something in
> > combination with Doxygen.
> 
> You know that's not the way IPC ever worked: you can't recover a spec from 
> something as irregular as source code; you have a structured IDL (in this 
> case the introspection xml) and you generate the bindings sources from that, 
> saving yourself from maintaining a lot of boilerplate code by hand.

Who said that the server really implements this written XML
introspection. That is not a requirement and actually when you have the
low-level D-Bus binding, then you have no introspection at all.

Regards

Marcel