we need a spec for handling mediums

[Avery Pennarun]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 05:37:21PM +0100, Thomas Leonard wrote:

> But that might change. What if someone makes an X-extension to fix the
> problems that led to ICE and D-BUS in the first place, for example? I'm
> worried about being tied to a particular technology (D-BUS) to solve a
> very generic requirement (configuration). Of course, I haven't seen the
> proposed API, but I'd want something that hides the fact it's using D-BUS,
> even if D-BUS is easily the best implementation to use in practice.

The dbus API is *already* supposed to be generic enough to swap out with
other things.  It is, itself, the general API you want.  You might want to
wrap it to make it less ugly or something (it's not bad, but C++ makes it
about 100 times quicker to use), but you don't need to wrap it to make it
more generic.

For example, dbus could be transparently changed to be able to talk over an
X extension instead of a unix domain socket.

> > It's a trivial one-line addition to .Xclients (or whatever someone is
> > using)
> 
> Very few users would be able to do that (or want to), and we can't do it
> automatically. This essentially means waiting several years before
> upstream authors can start requiring it (assuming all distros adopt D-BUS
> right now).

We *can* do it automatically.

It would obviously make sense for a dbus daemon to be launched on
demand when the first person wants to use it, the same way gconfd is already
launched.  Running a dbus daemon from the .Xclients is perhaps a bit more
elegant, but it's not actually useable.

> > Realistically nobody is going to install a newer GTK+ or whatever than
> > the one that comes with their distribution, either.
> 
> Well, if they're using zero install, they might get a newer version
> without even noticing (if they run a program that needs it)...

I think that realistically, people will install newer versions of whatever
they need in order to run the program they *really* want.  They're already
installing stuff (the program they really want), so installing a couple more
things at the same time isn't so bad.  Realistically, they already do it. 
Maybe they don't want to, but mostly they don't get a choice in the matter,
because almost all the programs need some random version of some random
library.  Zero install is a partial solution to that.  Debian's apt is
another.

Have fun,

Avery