Re: GEP 8: Runtime Interface Data Generator For ORbit2

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, Mark McLoughlin wrote:

> Hey,
> 	This GEP is a pretty straightforward "Here's what we need and
> here's the implementation - any objections" type GEP. We'll see how it
> pans out.
> 
> 	http://developer.gnome.org/gep/gep-8.html
> 
> 	Discussion is on orbit-list@gnome.org ...

I don't know very much about ORBit2 (I'm not even subscribed to 
orbit-list), but this strikes me as suboptimal from a performance 
perspective. I can just see the profiles of apps starting up and parsing 
idl files for a long time.

I would much rather see a solution based on typelibs. And by typelibs I
don't mean the current shared library thing, I mean architecture 
independent binary files that can be quickly mmaped and decoded by orbit. 
Much like the stuff XPCOM and COM uses[1].

If the IDL compiler generated such typelibs, and there were some automake 
macros to easily install idl files and build typelibs in 
$datadir/orbit-typelibs, then they could be read by ORBit at runtime and 
we would get the same benefits as parsing the IDL files except at a much 
smaller startup cost.

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/scriptable/typelib_file.html

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl@redhat.com    alla@lysator.liu.se 
He's an ungodly hunchbacked ex-con trapped in a world he never made. She's a 
bloodthirsty snooty mermaid from aristocratic European stock. They fight 
crime!