Re: why share implementation? (Re: GLib debate)

[George Staikos <staikos kde org>]

On Monday 21 July 2003 19:06, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> To pick one of the more ambitious efforts proposed so far, for D-BUS
> we have both a protocol spec and code. The code is designed to be
> maximally general (no GLib, handles out of memory cases, plain C,
> etc.), but at the same time if you wanted a specialized embedded or
> pure Java or whatever implementation, you should be able to write one
> using the spec.

  I agree entirely.  This is the effort I'm most familiar with, and it looks 
to be headed in the right direction.  I don't think any desktop has really 
"signed on" to the idea of d-bus yet, but if it's done *right*, I think it 
stands a better chance.  Sharing code here is very beneficial.

> I don't think we're likely to have time to implement a message bus or
> IPC system twice over, following the same spec, so the shared
> implementation is pretty practical for now. With the planned GLib/Qt
> wrappers, everyone should see a nice API for their environment.

  Exactly what I was trying to communicate!

> Anyway, I think the decision here is basically case-by-case and
> app-by-app. I believe we should have the option to do whatever
> combination of specs and code makes sense each time.

   Of course.  Another, perhaps much larger fish to tackle is the sound 
server.  It seems like there are half a dozen now, and people have complaints 
about all of them.  Writing two sound servers doesn't make sense.  Writing 
two client interfaces is probably a necessity.  Hopefully one of the servers 
already out there will mature and become something favorable for use by 
everyone.

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/