A common VFS and a Common conf-system [Part II]

[Jamie McCracken]

Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-03-02 at 23:00 +0000, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> 
> 
>>If its single threaded then it must be 100% async (otherwise waiting for 
>>a slow FTP connection would block other apps trying to access local 
>>storage).
> 
> 
> Asynchronous is a given.  There is absolutely no question at all about
> whether it will or wont be asynchronous - it will be.
> 
> 
>>An async one would also probably be unfreindly like the current 
>>Gnome-vfs thats why I say go for the in process route - we dont need 
>>threads or unfriendly async calls everywhere (well we will still need a 
>>few of them I suppose so apps dont appear dead while waiting!)
> 
> 
> OK, two things.  First off, the *daemon* being asynchronous has
> completely no impact on the application being synchronous or not.
> Apache is asynchronous, but that doesn't mean that a web browser must
> be, right?
> 
> Second, even given that, the API will be very heavily focused on
> asynchronous behavior, because you don't have a whole lot of choice.
> Applications need to remain responsive, handle expose events, allow the
> user the cancel the operation, and perhaps do other work in the
> background (think of a word processor with two windows open, for
> example).
> 
> A synchronous API should also be available; I do agree with that.
> Synchronous interfaces are easier to use, and non-GUI apps are probably
> quite happy using such an interface.  It's also possible to use a GUI
> with a synchronous interface similar to how some apps have synchronous
> dialog invocations, although those are something that are relatively
> frowned upon these days.  This synchronous interface is less important
> to the target applications of D-VFS than the asynchronous interface,
> however, and that should be kept in mind.
> 
> We will do both.  I even noted such in my first mail on the
> subject.  ;-)

Okay if you can pull it off and keep the API firendly then that would be 
cool but I just have that horrible feeling that it might end up being a 
bitch to use cause every function call would need a callback as a 
parameter to indicate it has completed and thats exactly why Gnome-vfs 
just turns people off - if you can find a way round that then yes it 
will be great :)  Good luck!

jamie.