[avahi] Re: Some notes on designing the Avahi DBUS API

[Lennart Poettering]

On Sat, 25.06.05 16:42, Trent Lloyd (lathiat at bur.st) wrote:

> > avahi-discover using core.h, the link between avahi-daemon and
> > avahi-discover was the unix socket, and that the simple protocol was
> > used there
> > And that dbus could replace this unix socket.
> > But it seems, i was wrong :)
> > 
> > How does dbus integrate with avahi-daemon, will it be implemented on
> > top of core:h (linking to avahi-core)? or is it directly built in
> > avahi-daemon like it seems when reading dbus-protocol.c.
> 
> Right, basically you are confused :)
> 
> avahi-core (the API used by avahi-discover) is the 'core' of avahi, its
> the mdns engine, this API can be used to write a daemon for speaking
> dbus, or for embedded applications, etc.
> 
> the 'simple protocol' is a very simple communication overa unix socket
> to the avahi-daemon (already implemented) that allows for resolving
> hostnames, ip reverses and search for dns servers.
> 
> This is used for use with libnss-mdns, which is a system library, needs
> to be fast with no deps and hence not using dbus.
> 
> avahi-daemon will implement a d-bus interface to this engine, as well as
> the existing socket protocol, and maybe some other stuff in future.
> 
> People should almost never be using 'avahi-core' directly, unless
> writing an embedded app or the daemon -- in your case writing a test
> mdnsbrowse/publish with the API would be usefull, because you plan to
> help me write the dbus daemon, which would involve using that API
> directly (unlike most people, who would use the dbus api).
> 
> Hope that clears things up. :)

I made a little drawing with dia which might help you to understand
how the modules currently play together:

http://freedesktop.org/~lennart/overview.png

> PS: lennart: Why are we not using the mailing list for this?

Good question. Let's move it there. I'll CC this mail there. Perhaps
we should bounce the previous traffic on this thread there too?

Lennart
-- 
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