[Telepathy] D-Bus tube establishment, and races

[Alban Crequy]

Hi,

I am trying to understand how an application can use the Connection
Manager D-Bus API to establish a D-Bus tube without races. Please tell
me if I am wrong.

Once the tube channel is requested, the D-Bus tube initiator follows
theses steps:

I1- call the method OfferDBusTube(service, parameters) -> tube_id
I2- call the method GetDBusTubeAddress(tube_id) -> bus_address
I3- connect to the bus_address.

On the client side, the application:

C1- receive the signal NewTube(tube_id, ...)
C2- call the method AcceptDBusTube(tube_id) -> bus_address
C3- wait until receiving the signal TubeStateChanged(tube_id, Tube_State_Open)
C4- connect to the bus_address
C5- call some methods on the private bus

The step C3 is required by the spec: "The client should not attempt to
connect to the address until the tube is open."
http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/spec.html

My fear is that the client start to call some methods on the private
bus (step C5) before the initiator application is connected to the CM
socket (step I3). If this happens, the first D-Bus message in the tube
may be lost because nobody is listening on the other side of the bus.

I guess the step C3 is supposed to prevent this. But I don't
understand how it is supposed to work. Is the Connection Manager
supposed to emit the TubeStateChanged signal with Tube_State_Open on
the client side (step C3) only after step I3? In this case, does
current implementations of Gabble, Salut, etc. send a network message
to the client when an application is connecting to the bus_address
(step I3)?

-- 
Alban Crequy