Integrating IM applications - OFI

[Mike Hearn]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:09:42 +0100, Olivier Goffart wrote:
> What's the difference of having it in the client library or in a daemon. 
> specially when there is not too much code.

The difference is that you're not constantly pinging connected
applications with broadcast "give me your data" messages. This is a great
way to kill performance by preventing any clients from being paged out by
the operating system, dramatically increasing memory pressure.

Actually that's only one reason. There are others. Christian explained a
few.

Sure it's technically possible to do everything in a client library,
in much the same way that you don't technically need an X server, just a
kernel-level framebuffer mutex but you'll get *much* better performance by
using a more sensible design.

> No matter how the daemon is small, fast and simple. I think the daemon
> is simply not required.

I think you're assuming dropping the daemon will improve
system performance. It won't. It will make it worse.

If it's not performance you're concerned about then what is it? Please
elaborate exactly what your problems with an extra process are, because
right now I don't see any obvious reasons behind it, just a vague
feeling that it's unnecessary and heavyweight.

thanks -mike