Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-07 Thread David C. Rankin
On Thursday 03 December 2009 12:19:58 and regarding:
> On 03/12/09 18:14, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> [...]
> > I'll add some additional points:
> > - it's implementation is large broken.
> how so?
> > - most software depending on it, will crash when dbus
> file bug reports and get developers to write proper software.
> > crashes, or fail to start uncracefully, or behave unexpected.
> i've honestly never seen dbus crash but then again i've experienced 
> almost none of the issues people often complain about with Linux
> > - some systems are actually not supported by hal while
> > they are by udev and have system-v IPCs.
> got nothing to do with dbus
> > - reinventing the wheel and calling it super-boat-2000
> > isn't going to help anyone. Instead of fixing problems,
> > people constantly create new ones.
> lol
> > - FDO is hierarchic and polical level.
> what
> > Dbus is hierarchic on technical level.
> > FDO wishes to provide a better experience to users by
> > integrating all software nicely into one global truth.
> > The Foss ecosystem is not hierarchic.
> > The Foss ecosystem does not require a single truth
> > to rule them all.
> > The Foss ecosystem does not require to be competitive
> > with OtherOs.
> >
> what does any of that have to do with dbus in a technical sense?
> > --
> >
> > Arvid
> > Asgaard Technologies
> >
> 
> 

As for dbus or related processes crashing and causing fits, I don't know the 
precise cause, but I suspect an attempted save via sftp or fish on a dbus based 
app that sent my server into a tailspin (note, the offending connection was 
from openSuSE 11.2 not Arch). See the 'Nov 17 03:28:04' entries below:

Nov 17 03:08:41 nirvana sshd[22185]: Accepted publickey for david from 
192.168.6.102 port 59448 ssh2
Nov 17 03:08:46 nirvana su: (to root) david on /dev/pts/3
Nov 17 03:10:01 nirvana /usr/sbin/cron[23394]: (david) CMD 
(/home/david/linux/scripts/Learn_as_spam_cron)
Nov 17 03:12:01 nirvana /usr/sbin/cron[23414]: (drr) CMD 
(/usr/local/bin/Learn_as_spam_cron)
Nov 17 03:14:01 nirvana /usr/sbin/cron[23430]: (deborah) CMD 
(/usr/local/bin/Learn_as_spam_cron)
Nov 17 03:16:01 nirvana /usr/sbin/cron[23489]: (zachry) CMD 
(/usr/local/bin/Learn_as_spam_cron)
Nov 17 03:18:01 nirvana /usr/sbin/cron[24289]: (sydney) CMD 
(/usr/local/bin/Learn_as_spam_cron)
Nov 17 03:18:29 nirvana dhcpd: Wrote 0 deleted host decls to leases file.
Nov 17 03:18:29 nirvana dhcpd: Wrote 0 new dynamic host decls to leases file.
Nov 17 03:18:29 nirvana dhcpd: Wrote 38 leases to leases file.
Nov 17 03:20:00 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.6.120 from 
00:25:00:df:fe:2c (iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:20:00 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPACK on 192.168.6.120 to 00:25:00:df:fe:2c 
(iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:21:26 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.6.120 from 
00:25:00:df:fe:2c (iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:21:26 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPACK on 192.168.6.120 to 00:25:00:df:fe:2c 
(iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:24:11 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.6.120 from 
00:25:00:df:fe:2c (iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:24:11 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPACK on 192.168.6.120 to 00:25:00:df:fe:2c 
(iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:24:11 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:25:00:df:fe:2c 
(iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:24:12 nirvana dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 192.168.6.120 to 00:25:00:df:fe:2c 
(iPod-touch-2) via eth0
Nov 17 03:28:04 nirvana shadow[24998]: group already exists - group=ntadmin, 
by=0
Nov 17 03:28:04 nirvana dbus-daemon: Unable to reload configuration: Element 
 not allowed inside  in configuration 
file
Nov 17 03:28:04 nirvana avahi-daemon[3764]: Disconnected from D-Bus, exiting.
Nov 17 03:28:04 nirvana avahi-daemon[3764]: Got SIGQUIT, quitting.
Nov 17 03:28:04 nirvana powersaved[4644]: ERROR (filter_function:98) DBus 
daemon disconnected. Trying to reconnect...
Nov 17 03:28:04 nirvana avahi-daemon[3764]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on 
interface eth0.IPv4 with address 192.168.6.17.
Nov 17 03:28:04 nirvana avahi-dnsconfd[3775]: read(): EOF
Nov 17 03:28:07 nirvana console-kit-daemon[2480]: WARNING: Couldn't connect to 
system bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: 
Connection refused
Nov 17 03:28:21 nirvana syslog-ng[2458]: last message repeated 4 times
Nov 17 03:28:21 nirvana gconfd (david-1390): GConf server is not in use, 
shutting down.
Nov 17 03:28:21 nirvana gconfd (david-1390): Error releasing lockfile: Failed 
to link 
'/tmp/gconfd-david/lock/1t1258450101ut827002u1000p1390r552977190k2414831832' to 
'/tmp/gconfd-david/lock/ior': No such file or directory
Nov 17 03:28:21 nirvana gconfd (david-1390): Exiting
Nov 17 03:28:22 nirvana console-kit-daemon[2480]: WARNING: Couldn't connect to 
system bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: 
Connection refused
Nov 17 03:29:07 nirvana syslog-ng[2458]: last message repeated 15 times
Nov 17 03:29:10 nirvana console-kit-daemon[2480]: WARNING: Couldn't connect to 
system bus: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/sy

Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-05 Thread Guus Snijders

Jan de Groot schreef:
[...]


I always thought GNU was about one tool - one job, but then they
violated that by building emacs.


Actually, one tool for one job is a Unix statement and dates from (long) 
before GNU:



(i) Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh 
rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

[...]
This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it 
well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text 
streams, because that is a universal interface.



;)



[1]
Basics of the Unix Philosophy
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html

A very nice document by the way, especially for the 'younger' ones among us.


mvg,
   Guus



Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-05 Thread Pierre Chapuis
Le Fri, 4 Dec 2009 23:26:27 +0100,
Xavier  a écrit :

> If I got that right, I find it quite funny and ironical that a
> clueless and endless ranting about dbus ended up making me understand
> the coolness of dbus.

I agree, it sounds cool, but then I thought: web browsers have been
doing that for years. Then comes Google Chrome, which uses a new
process for each tab to increase stability, and most people love it.

I say maybe we need design patterns on that issue ;)

-- 
catwell


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-05 Thread Pierre Chapuis
Le Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:34:59 +0100,
Jan de Groot  a écrit :

> Please don't post things you haven't looked into. Hal has nothing to do
> with your gfx driver, as gfx drivers are probed by xorg itself using the
> libpciaccess library. The only things managed by hal/dbus in xorg are
> input devices.

By the way, for those who wanted an example of something broken, I'm
not sure but I think this might be related:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/17380

-- 
catwell


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Raghavendra Prabhu
Correct me if I am wrong here, but the objective of dbus/ipc is to
vastly simplify programming -- suppose you need to write a program
which opens document in gedit as one of the steps  He doesn't need
to know about the command line flags of gedit.By having a single
interface like dbus, it simplifies his task.
Also one more thing, ipc interface like dbus is preserved across
versions, whereas the cli flags can change.  It is more like interface
in object technology where interface remains same but underlying
implementation can change(and shouldn't matter to you).

I think  dbus brings all those OOPs to larger level.
I largely think people here are also OOP vs normal procedural (or C vs
C++). It is like C++ is slower than C(but there is some advantage
also)

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 5:04 AM, Jan de Groot  wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 19:49 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
>> and if you're really unlucky you get dbus to crash hal to crash your
>> gfx
>> driver, so your only option left is the power button.
>
> Please don't post things you haven't looked into. Hal has nothing to do
> with your gfx driver, as gfx drivers are probed by xorg itself using the
> libpciaccess library. The only things managed by hal/dbus in xorg are
> input devices.
>
>


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Jan de Groot
On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 19:49 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> and if you're really unlucky you get dbus to crash hal to crash your
> gfx 
> driver, so your only option left is the power button. 

Please don't post things you haven't looked into. Hal has nothing to do
with your gfx driver, as gfx drivers are probed by xorg itself using the
libpciaccess library. The only things managed by hal/dbus in xorg are
input devices.



Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Dwight Schauer
gedit --help shows --new-window.
I don't see what issue is

Dwight

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Heiko Baums  wrote:
> Am Fri, 4 Dec 2009 23:38:02 +0100
> schrieb f...@kokkinizita.net:
>
>> THAT is completely irrelevant. I never claimed
>> to be forced to use it.
>
> THAT is completely relevant. You don't want a text editor which uses
> IPC so don't use one.
>
>> The point is that you can allow a user to have multiple
>> tabs by providing an interface to request a new tab.
>> This still leaves the user the choice not to have new
>> tab by starting a new instance instead of using the
>> new tab option. Providing this does not require IPC.
>
> And what? The gedit devs want to use IPC and they likely have reasons
> for this. If you don't like this don't use gedit or file a bug report
> to gedit upstream.
>
>> Instead of this, you prefer to limit the user's choice
>> by creating a new tab even if the user starts a new
>> instance. This removes a valuable choice.
>
> This is indeed a valuable choice, choosing between opening a new
> instance which requires more resources than opening a new tab which
> requires less resources. I bet you can configure if a text file should
> be opened in a new instance or in a new tab. Otherwise don't click on
> the new tab but start a new instance.
>
> Other option: Use mousepad. It can only handle one file at a time.
> Every file is opened in a separate instance.
>
> Or use nano, also no multi-file editor. And there's still echo.
>
> Which choice is removed by gedit?
>
> Heiko
>


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Heiko Baums
Am Fri, 4 Dec 2009 23:38:02 +0100
schrieb f...@kokkinizita.net:

> THAT is completely irrelevant. I never claimed
> to be forced to use it. 

THAT is completely relevant. You don't want a text editor which uses
IPC so don't use one.

> The point is that you can allow a user to have multiple
> tabs by providing an interface to request a new tab.
> This still leaves the user the choice not to have new
> tab by starting a new instance instead of using the 
> new tab option. Providing this does not require IPC.

And what? The gedit devs want to use IPC and they likely have reasons
for this. If you don't like this don't use gedit or file a bug report
to gedit upstream.

> Instead of this, you prefer to limit the user's choice
> by creating a new tab even if the user starts a new
> instance. This removes a valuable choice.

This is indeed a valuable choice, choosing between opening a new
instance which requires more resources than opening a new tab which
requires less resources. I bet you can configure if a text file should
be opened in a new instance or in a new tab. Otherwise don't click on
the new tab but start a new instance.

Other option: Use mousepad. It can only handle one file at a time.
Every file is opened in a separate instance.

Or use nano, also no multi-file editor. And there's still echo.

Which choice is removed by gedit?

Heiko


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread fons
On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 04:59:10PM -0500, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

> But frankly when you wrote that gedit shouldn't "require IPC at all"
> it seems to me that what you really mean is "gedit isn't minimalist
> enough for me" since it provides a bunch of features that you don't
> need/want.

What 'seems to you' is a creation of your mind, nothing
more. It has no relation at all to what I mean, and
therefore it's irrelevant.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

Wie der Mond heute Nacht aussieht !
Ist es nicht ein seltsames Bild ?


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Allan McRae

Xavier wrote:

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 10:59 PM, David Rosenstrauch  wrote:

Here's a common use case (and probably the reason why that feature got added
in the first place):

You're looking through your file manager at a directory full of text
documents, and you double-click on whole a bunch of them to edit them in
gedit.  It would be nice if they all opened in the same editor instance
(i.e., in a new tab), rather than having dozens of separate editor windows
open up.  (I use this functionality all the time, and find it very helpful.)

Having a "New Tab" button doesn't solve this problem at all.  The only thing
that does solve it is the ability for an existing gedit window be able to
get notified about the "open another document" request.  And that requires
dbus (or similar) to make it happen.



Oh, I did not realize that. I have always found that issue to be a big
flaw of gui file managers.
So that's the whole point of single instance application and libunique
[1] that JGC just mentioned. Of course :)
But so it actually means that every application that you can
potentially launch on multiple files (from a file manager) would
benefit from using libunique (which implies dbus)... or the equivalent
functionality on top of dbus... or the equivalent functionality
without using a standard interface which would be a big mess ?

If I got that right, I find it quite funny and ironical that a
clueless and endless ranting about dbus ended up making me understand
the coolness of dbus.

[1] http://live.gnome.org/LibUnique



Well, at least something came out of this thread...


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread fons
On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 10:55:32PM +0100, Heiko Baums wrote:
> Am Fri, 4 Dec 2009 22:11:08 +0100
> schrieb f...@kokkinizita.net:
> 
> > It is not beside the point. To create a new tab, just provide
> > a 'New Tab' button. Or have tabs from the start and label the
> > next free one '+'. It doesn't require IPC at all.
> 
> You're not forced to using gedit.

THAT is completely irrelevant. I never claimed
to be forced to use it. 

The point is that you can allow a user to have multiple
tabs by providing an interface to request a new tab.
This still leaves the user the choice not to have new
tab by starting a new instance instead of using the 
new tab option. Providing this does not require IPC.

Instead of this, you prefer to limit the user's choice
by creating a new tab even if the user starts a new
instance. This removes a valuable choice.

What is the rationale for doing this ? What is the
rationale for forcing a single instance, apart from
having a reason to use IPC ? 

Ciao,

-- 
FA

Wie der Mond heute Nacht aussieht !
Ist es nicht ein seltsames Bild ?


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Xavier
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 10:59 PM, David Rosenstrauch  wrote:
>
> Here's a common use case (and probably the reason why that feature got added
> in the first place):
>
> You're looking through your file manager at a directory full of text
> documents, and you double-click on whole a bunch of them to edit them in
> gedit.  It would be nice if they all opened in the same editor instance
> (i.e., in a new tab), rather than having dozens of separate editor windows
> open up.  (I use this functionality all the time, and find it very helpful.)
>
> Having a "New Tab" button doesn't solve this problem at all.  The only thing
> that does solve it is the ability for an existing gedit window be able to
> get notified about the "open another document" request.  And that requires
> dbus (or similar) to make it happen.
>

Oh, I did not realize that. I have always found that issue to be a big
flaw of gui file managers.
So that's the whole point of single instance application and libunique
[1] that JGC just mentioned. Of course :)
But so it actually means that every application that you can
potentially launch on multiple files (from a file manager) would
benefit from using libunique (which implies dbus)... or the equivalent
functionality on top of dbus... or the equivalent functionality
without using a standard interface which would be a big mess ?

If I got that right, I find it quite funny and ironical that a
clueless and endless ranting about dbus ended up making me understand
the coolness of dbus.

[1] http://live.gnome.org/LibUnique


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread David Rosenstrauch

On 12/04/2009 04:11 PM, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote:

On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 04:02:06PM -0500, David Rosenstrauch wrote:


But this is besides the point.  There's legitimate functionality
here that requires the use of dbus (or something similar).  Whether
you personally *like* that functionality is a separate issue.


It is not beside the point. To create a new tab, just provide
a 'New Tab' button. Or have tabs from the start and label the
next free one '+'. It doesn't require IPC at all.

Ciao,



Here's a common use case (and probably the reason why that feature got 
added in the first place):


You're looking through your file manager at a directory full of text 
documents, and you double-click on whole a bunch of them to edit them in 
gedit.  It would be nice if they all opened in the same editor instance 
(i.e., in a new tab), rather than having dozens of separate editor 
windows open up.  (I use this functionality all the time, and find it 
very helpful.)


Having a "New Tab" button doesn't solve this problem at all.  The only 
thing that does solve it is the ability for an existing gedit window be 
able to get notified about the "open another document" request.  And 
that requires dbus (or similar) to make it happen.


So again, there's a legitimate feature here that requires the dbus 
dependency.  If you don't need or want that feature, or don't use a GUI 
file manager, or feel that gedit is "bloated" because of this, yada 
yada, then by all means choose a different editor.  There's loads of 
them - as I'm sure you're aware - and I'm sure there's at least one that 
doesn't have a dbus dependency.


But frankly when you wrote that gedit shouldn't "require IPC at all" it 
seems to me that what you really mean is "gedit isn't minimalist enough 
for me" since it provides a bunch of features that you don't need/want.


DR


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Heiko Baums
Am Fri, 4 Dec 2009 22:11:08 +0100
schrieb f...@kokkinizita.net:

> It is not beside the point. To create a new tab, just provide
> a 'New Tab' button. Or have tabs from the start and label the
> next free one '+'. It doesn't require IPC at all.

You're not forced to using gedit. If you don't like gedit use mousepad.
Oh, you can't do that. It's evil WIMP, it can be used with the mouse.
Then just use nano. Ok, not really. Nano depends on
glibc, ncurses and texinfo. So it's not enough minimalism.

Your ultimate text editor: echo "..." > textfile
But this also depends on glibc.

So, sorry, I only now such bloated text editors.

Heiko


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread fons
On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 04:02:06PM -0500, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

> But this is besides the point.  There's legitimate functionality
> here that requires the use of dbus (or something similar).  Whether
> you personally *like* that functionality is a separate issue.

It is not beside the point. To create a new tab, just provide
a 'New Tab' button. Or have tabs from the start and label the
next free one '+'. It doesn't require IPC at all.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

Wie der Mond heute Nacht aussieht !
Ist es nicht ein seltsames Bild ?


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread David Rosenstrauch

On 12/04/2009 03:50 PM, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote:

On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 02:09:49PM -0500, David Rosenstrauch wrote:


The answer to *that* question, as he wrote, is so that "when you
start a second Gedit process, it opens a new tab in your current
Gedit window instead of creating a new one".


And why should that happen at all ? If I wanted a new tab
in the current Gedit window then I'd use whatever controls
Gedit provides to get one. And to be able to do that Gedit
doesn't need any IPC at all. If I start a new process that
means I want I new window. 


Ciao,


Perhaps there's a configuration setting that lets you toggle this?  I 
really don't know.  Under KDE some editors have this behavior on by 
default (Kate) while others don't have it at all (Kedit/Kwrite).


But this is besides the point.  There's legitimate functionality here 
that requires the use of dbus (or something similar).  Whether you 
personally *like* that functionality is a separate issue.


DR


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread fons
On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 02:09:49PM -0500, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

> The answer to *that* question, as he wrote, is so that "when you
> start a second Gedit process, it opens a new tab in your current
> Gedit window instead of creating a new one".

And why should that happen at all ? If I wanted a new tab
in the current Gedit window then I'd use whatever controls
Gedit provides to get one. And to be able to do that Gedit
doesn't need any IPC at all. If I start a new process that
means I want I new window. 

Ciao,

-- 
FA

Wie der Mond heute Nacht aussieht !
Ist es nicht ein seltsames Bild ?


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Smith Dhumbumroong
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:07:24 +0100
Arvid Picciani  wrote:

> Arvid Picciani wrote:
> > Sounds like either this discussion is worth discussing again.
> 
> i forgot to add:  "or you're a rare exception, Jan."
> thanks for at least trying to see the point here, much aprechiated.
> i hope others follow.
> 

I can't believe this...

Look, what do you hope to achieve here? To convince everyone that
dbus is evil and should be purged from Arch? What will that
accomplished?

As Judd have said, Arch Linux is what you make it. You don't like dbus.
Fine. We get it. Believe me we really do. Don't use it if you don't want
to then. It's _your_ Arch after all, do whatever you like with it and
let us do whatever we want to ours.

You've already started your own project, that Arch Antidesktop or
whatever. Wouldn't it be more productive to spend your time on that
instead of here arguing around in circle? 

Sorry for being OT, won't happen again.


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread David Rosenstrauch

On 12/04/2009 07:24 AM, Jan de Groot wrote:

On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 03:38 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:

Ng Oon-Ee wrote:

 > What does upstream have to say about this dependency? Does not seem
 > 'necessary' to me

http://blogs.igalia.com/itoral/2006/03/30/adding-dbus-support-to-gedit/

priceless finding.

let me sum up:
"
- There is feature X which works very well
- He discovered it doesn't use dbus.
- He starts work on a very complicated patch that makes it use dbus.


Let's sum up:

- there's a feature using a deprecated library (bacon uses the
bonobo-activation framework)
- he discovered the new way to do these things is by replacing it by
dbus
- he starts work on something that replaces bacon/bonobo and uses dbus


Yup.  I was just about to say the same thing.

Replacing a non-standard messaging library with dbus - which is 
effectively now the new standard messaging library, used in numerous 
apps & daemons - sounds sensible to me.


In other words:  this isn't a matter of "why does gedit need dbus", but 
rather "why does gedit need to use a messaging library at all"?


The answer to *that* question, as he wrote, is so that "when you start a 
second Gedit process, it opens a new tab in your current Gedit window 
instead of creating a new one".


Perhaps this feature didn't need to be implemented using a messaging 
library.  But perhaps that did make the most sense for a number of 
reasons.  I really don't know.  And frankly, neither do you.  As you're 
not a gedit developer, I really can't put much trust in your opinion on 
this issue.


DR


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Arvid Picciani

Arvid Picciani wrote:

Sounds like either this discussion is worth discussing again.


i forgot to add:  "or you're a rare exception, Jan."
thanks for at least trying to see the point here, much aprechiated.
i hope others follow.

--
Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Nathan Wayde

On 04/12/09 18:49, Arvid Picciani wrote:

Sounds like either this discussion is worth discussing again.
I'll try hard not to trip anyone...

Jan de Groot wrote:


Really, you're just having a 100% anti-dbus attitude, but somehow you're
fine with Bonobo.

 > Maybe you didn't know, but Bonobo is worse than dbus.
 > It's a complicated slow framework with a lot of design mistakes.

I honestly had no idea what it is.
Looks like the ignorance goes both ways.

 >I think that is because emacs decided to be an operating system instead
 >of a text editor. Seriously, when I read the last release notes, I
 >though: "WTF does a text editor need dns-sd for?"

That' why fellow minimalists use vim, and call me a whiner. heh.
Yeah, there is worse people then me...
On a related note, i had now contact with lots of people of the OTHER
side of the argument, ie the minimalists, off list. Sorry to say,
they're even more retarded, in that some even think glibc should be
removed ( and replaced with _what_? ) or that they think dbus should be
removed but then whine about their gui breaking (dude, whats your point?).
Additionaly i researched on some market players behind dbus. Besides the
smell of money and taste of blood, there are some professional people
behind this, who may have an agenda hostile to some people, but they get
stuff done. And whoever gets stuff done, wins in FOSS world. It's that
easy, and i have no objection to easy politics.


Note that a lot of work has been duplicated in applications when they
were ported to single-instance applications using dbus.


Err. 10 lines of code? I don't even want to know how much code
duplication dbus type system implies. But yeah depend on how you argue.

- dbus vs some other non unified crap that does basicly the same:
clear that dbus wins, since code duplication can't be any useful.

- dbus vs system v ipc
clear that system v wins, since it worked 20 years ago, still does
and is ridiculously simple.

Similar some people here have argued that compared to ubuntu, archlinux
is pretty unix. Well compared to ubuntu, everything wins. That's not
fair :P


This has been
fixed by using the libunique library.


Which could use standard mechanics instead of something unrelated like
dbus. But i'm glad they abstracted that into a library, so it can be
replaced with 10 lines of system v ipc code. I should propably smack
some upstream people on that one next fosdem.
Everyone doing their own dbus code and then realizing it breaks would
have been a serious facepalm, considered that this is exactly what
people trip on who remember corba. Seriously guys, can we PLEASE at
least avoid doing the same mistakes again? corba sucks, and anyone
disagreeing please instantly press the kill button on your MUA, or just
shoot yourself. University here is inventing an object rpc for java
right now, and its just corba restricted to java. I'm so raging on
peoples inability to see past mistakes.

At this moment anjuta, brasero,

devhelp, gnome-bluetooth, gnome-control-center, gnome-disk-utility,
gnome-power-manager, nautilus and totem use this library for their
single-instance functionality.


I'm totally fine with that. I never objected to gnome using d-bus. They
have a valid reason to do so. The problem is, they don't have a valid
reason to force everyone else to use it.


Gedit uses its own complicated way and
should switch to this library also if possible.


I have used gedit, but that's my own damn fault. It's all the upstream
who's been stupid.

 >You're talking crap. Examples of other IPC frameworks are bonobo and
 >dcop. Both launched the daemon on initial usage.

Well here is your part of the ignorance.
You're as much qualified to talk about unix, as i am to talk about
gnome. This isn't going to lead anywhere unless you do your homework.

 >Dbus also launches a sesion bus when it's needed, but for the system
 >bus, things are different. You can't run a system bus as normal user,
 >unless you install dbus as setuid root and make some code to launch the
 >system bus on request.

I have to understand the obcurity behind all this. Why can't they use
unix sessions? What's a system bus and why can't they use system v for
that? But well, here's my part of the ignorance again. I don't even want
to know what kind of ugly code they all ran before dbus. I've seen dcop
and actually liked it. As long i could just kill it and things still
worked (well kde tripped on it i think, but thats irrelevant to me)

 > xfce terminal has a patch in our svn for it.

I so raged on that. I mean, its a terminal... thankfully there is urxvt.

 > I don't mind if xfce terminal can't open new
 > tabs or windows when dbus goes down, but please don't kill the
 > ones that are open.

Well even then, how are you supposed to fix the problem when you can't
open a terminal? I mean, if you're a kde user, you can't
- open a terminal, since the terminal needs dbus
- open the menu to open xterm, since the menu needs dbus
- kill X because they disa

Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Arvid Picciani

Sounds like either this discussion is worth discussing again.
I'll try hard not to trip anyone...

Jan de Groot wrote:


Really, you're just having a 100% anti-dbus attitude, but somehow you're
fine with Bonobo. 

> Maybe you didn't know, but Bonobo is worse than dbus.
> It's a complicated slow framework with a lot of design mistakes.

I honestly had no idea what it is.
Looks like the ignorance goes both ways.

>I think that is because emacs decided to be an operating system instead
>of a text editor. Seriously, when I read the last release notes, I
>though: "WTF does a text editor need dns-sd for?"

That' why fellow minimalists use vim, and call me a whiner. heh.
Yeah, there is worse people then me...
On a related note, i had now contact with lots of people of the OTHER 
side of the argument, ie the minimalists, off list.  Sorry to say, 
they're even more retarded, in that some even think glibc should be 
removed ( and replaced with _what_? ) or that they think dbus should be 
removed but then whine about their gui breaking (dude, whats your point?).
Additionaly i researched on some market players behind dbus. Besides the 
smell of money and taste of blood, there are some professional people 
behind this, who may have an agenda hostile to some people, but they get 
stuff done. And whoever gets stuff done, wins in FOSS world. It's that 
easy, and i have no objection to easy politics.



Note that a lot of work has been duplicated in applications when they
were ported to single-instance applications using dbus. 


Err. 10 lines of code? I don't even want to know how much code 
duplication dbus type system implies. But yeah depend on how you argue.


-  dbus vs some other non unified crap that does basicly the same:
clear that dbus wins, since code duplication can't be any useful.

-  dbus vs system v ipc
clear that system v wins, since it worked 20 years ago, still does
and is ridiculously simple.

Similar some people here have argued that compared to ubuntu, archlinux 
is pretty unix. Well compared to ubuntu, everything wins. That's not fair :P



This has been
fixed by using the libunique library. 


Which could use standard mechanics instead of something unrelated like 
dbus. But i'm glad they abstracted that into a library, so it can be 
replaced with 10 lines of system v ipc code. I should propably smack 
some upstream people on that one next fosdem.
Everyone doing their own dbus code and then realizing it breaks would 
have been a serious facepalm, considered that this is exactly what 
people trip on who remember corba. Seriously guys, can we PLEASE at 
least avoid doing the same mistakes again?  corba sucks, and anyone 
disagreeing please instantly press the kill button on your MUA, or just 
shoot yourself. University here is inventing an object rpc for java 
right now, and its just corba restricted to java. I'm so raging on 
peoples inability to see past mistakes.


At this moment anjuta, brasero,

devhelp, gnome-bluetooth, gnome-control-center, gnome-disk-utility,
gnome-power-manager, nautilus and totem use this library for their
single-instance functionality. 


I'm totally fine with that. I never objected to gnome using d-bus. They 
have a valid reason to do so.  The problem is, they don't have a valid 
reason to force everyone else to use it.



Gedit uses its own complicated way and
should switch to this library also if possible.


I have used gedit, but that's my own damn fault. It's all the upstream 
who's been stupid.


>You're talking crap. Examples of other IPC frameworks are bonobo and
>dcop. Both launched the daemon on initial usage.

Well here is your part of the ignorance.
You're as much qualified to talk about unix, as i am to talk about 
gnome. This isn't going to lead anywhere unless you do your homework.


>Dbus also launches a sesion bus when it's needed, but for the system
>bus, things are different. You can't run a system bus as normal user,
>unless you install dbus as setuid root and make some code to launch the
>system bus on request.

I have to understand the obcurity behind all this. Why can't they use 
unix sessions? What's a system bus and why can't they use system v for 
that? But well, here's my part of the ignorance again. I don't even want 
to know what kind of ugly code they all ran before dbus. I've seen dcop 
and actually liked it. As long i could just kill it and things still 
worked (well kde tripped on it i think, but thats irrelevant to me)


> xfce terminal has a patch in our svn for it.

I so raged on that. I mean, its a terminal...  thankfully there is urxvt.

> I don't mind if xfce terminal can't open new
> tabs or windows when dbus goes down, but please don't kill the
> ones  that are open.

Well even then, how are you supposed to fix the problem when you can't 
open a terminal? I mean, if you're a kde user, you can't

- open a terminal, since the terminal needs dbus
- open the menu to open xterm, since the menu needs dbus
- kill X because they disabled th

Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Jan de Groot
On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 00:52 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> Pierre Chapuis wrote:
> 
> > Take gedit for example. It is a text editor, and:
> > 
> > [23:44 TA|catwell] ldd $(which gedit) | grep dbus
> > libdbus-glib-1.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdbus-glib-1.so.2 
> > (0x7f5df48bb000)
> > libdbus-1.so.3 => /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.3 (0x7f5df467c000)
> > 
> > AFAIK it uses dbus only to communicate with itself (between its instances).
> > There is no iteroperability problem, so D-Bus is not that useful to me.
> > But then again, maybe I don't know how gedit works well enough to judge...
> > 
> 
> 
> funny thing:  gedit is the first time i noticed the problem.
> then i went emacs, and now emacs depends on dbus.

I think that is because emacs decided to be an operating system instead
of a text editor. Seriously, when I read the last release notes, I
though: "WTF does a text editor need dns-sd for?". Seems they
implemented that functionality through dbus, which is the only way to
communicate with Avahi (actually the avahi client libs do it for you).
I always thought GNU was about one tool - one job, but then they
violated that by building emacs.



Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Jan de Groot
On Thu, 2009-12-03 at 19:14 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> > Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
> > with other programs.
> 
> and those don't require a user space daemon. 

You're talking crap. Examples of other IPC frameworks are bonobo and
dcop. Both launched the daemon on initial usage. On a modern GNOME
desktop you still have a bonobo-activation-server running because
evolution still uses it.

Dbus also launches a sesion bus when it's needed, but for the system
bus, things are different. You can't run a system bus as normal user,
unless you install dbus as setuid root and make some code to launch the
system bus on request.

One thing I hate about dbus is the fact that a lot of applications crash
together with shutdown of dbus. gnome-session and xfce terminal come to
mind. I think gnome-session has been fixed for this, xfce terminal has a
patch in our svn for it. I don't mind if xfce terminal can't open new
tabs or windows when dbus goes down, but please don't kill the ones that
are open. This is not actually a bug in dbus, but an issue with
applications using it.



Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-04 Thread Jan de Groot
On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 03:38 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
> 
>  > What does upstream have to say about this dependency? Does not seem
>  > 'necessary' to me
> 
> http://blogs.igalia.com/itoral/2006/03/30/adding-dbus-support-to-gedit/
> 
> priceless finding.
> 
> let me sum up:
> "
> - There is feature X which works very well
> - He discovered it doesn't use dbus.
> - He starts work on a very complicated patch that makes it use dbus.

Let's sum up:

- there's a feature using a deprecated library (bacon uses the
bonobo-activation framework)
- he discovered the new way to do these things is by replacing it by
dbus
- he starts work on something that replaces bacon/bonobo and uses dbus

Really, you're just having a 100% anti-dbus attitude, but somehow you're
fine with Bonobo. Maybe you didn't know, but Bonobo is worse than dbus.
It's a complicated slow framework with a lot of design mistakes.

The problem with dbus here is that Bonobo was matured, dbus is quite
young. Dbus was lacking some features in the beginning, causing nasty
regressions. One example was the lack of possibility to pass environment
variables to a dbus-launched application. I don't know if this is
possible already, but I think they worked around the limitation by not
using environment variables for such stuff anymore.

Note that a lot of work has been duplicated in applications when they
were ported to single-instance applications using dbus. This has been
fixed by using the libunique library. At this moment anjuta, brasero,
devhelp, gnome-bluetooth, gnome-control-center, gnome-disk-utility,
gnome-power-manager, nautilus and totem use this library for their
single-instance functionality. Gedit uses its own complicated way and
should switch to this library also if possible.



Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Shridhar Daithankar
On Friday 04 December 2009 08:08:03 Arvid Picciani wrote:
> Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
>  > What does upstream have to say about this dependency? Does not seem
>  > 'necessary' to me
> 
> http://blogs.igalia.com/itoral/2006/03/30/adding-dbus-support-to-gedit/
> 
> priceless finding.
> 
> let me sum up:
> "
> - There is feature X which works very well
> - He discovered it doesn't use dbus.
> - He starts work on a very complicated patch that makes it use dbus.


Why would gedit need to support dbus? AFAIK, KDE supports these things in 
kdelibs and everybody on top just has everything kdelibs support say new kio 
slaves.

one more reason not to use gnome.

for dbus, IMO it just adds a protocol on top of it. Warranted or not aside, 
XML is not unixy enough anyways.

My prediction is world would reinvent CORBA functionally and would refuse to 
call/recognise it as such. It will be only a decade late. 

DCOP was invented by KDE because CORBA was too heavy locally(at least thats a 
technical reason). dbus is succesor of dcop because gnome couldn't use dcop. 

I hate gnome for the ideas it represents. "Application foo got y pixel spacing 
between icons" can't be a feature item in relase in 200x. Its just sad design.


-- 
 Shridhar


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Brendan Long  wrote:
>
>> Let me illustrate the problem here by construction an argument with a
>> similar flaw:
>>
>> "The mouse is inflexible and should be deprecated, as a stylus has the
>> advantage of being cordless. All modern pointing devices should be
>> cordless and i think these mouse users are just from the 60s."
>
> Furthermore, no application should ever be built with support for
> styluses because some applications have buggy stylus support and adding
> support for something I don't need is against the Arch Way(tm).

After all these replies I can see that there are very few and
questionable technical reasons against DBus. There are just some pet
peeves that can be avoided with a little common sense and good will,
both things that we always think we have in excess and the others have
in shortage.

Well, I thanks for the answers and think it was fun, even if just for
the wannabe anthropologist in me.

Best wishes.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Brendan Long

> Let me illustrate the problem here by construction an argument with a 
> similar flaw:
> 
> "The mouse is inflexible and should be deprecated, as a stylus has the 
> advantage of being cordless. All modern pointing devices should be 
> cordless and i think these mouse users are just from the 60s."

Furthermore, no application should ever be built with support for
styluses because some applications have buggy stylus support and adding
support for something I don't need is against the Arch Way(tm).

-Brendan Long


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Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 12:49 AM, Arvid Picciani  wrote:
> Correct me if i'm wrong, but i read that as:
>
> "
> - THe argument is valid
> - but irrelevant because the positive side is some feature no one needs.
> "

You're clearly putting words in my mouth. I didn't said your argument
was valid, rather the contrary. I showed why I think your argument is
_invalid_.. The functionality was not lost and there are advantages
now, without any new disadvantage (because DBus is not inefficient).
The solution they had before was not standard (every app can have a
different one) and the burden to maintain it was on the shoulder of
the developer. Now they have the same functionality with a general
purpose solution that allows other uses, yet not envisioned, but valid
anyway.

So why is that so hard to understand? Or you just don't want to.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Arvid Picciani

Denis A. Altoé Falqueto wrote:

2009/12/4 Arvid Picciani :

http://blogs.igalia.com/itoral/2006/03/30/adding-dbus-support-to-gedit/

priceless finding.

let me sum up:
"
- There is feature X which works very well
- He discovered it doesn't use dbus.
- He starts work on a very complicated patch that makes it use dbus.


As I understand it, the complexity was related to the fact that GEdit
didn't had DBus support. Of course the first patch will be "complex"
and replace a "working functionality", but for now on, GEdit can
expose events and functions to _any_ other application through DBus.
Just because nobody is using right now, doesn't mean that it will
never be useful.



Correct me if i'm wrong, but i read that as:

"
- THe argument is valid
- but irrelevant because the positive side is some feature no one needs.
"

--
Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
2009/12/4 Arvid Picciani :
> http://blogs.igalia.com/itoral/2006/03/30/adding-dbus-support-to-gedit/
>
> priceless finding.
>
> let me sum up:
> "
> - There is feature X which works very well
> - He discovered it doesn't use dbus.
> - He starts work on a very complicated patch that makes it use dbus.

As I understand it, the complexity was related to the fact that GEdit
didn't had DBus support. Of course the first patch will be "complex"
and replace a "working functionality", but for now on, GEdit can
expose events and functions to _any_ other application through DBus.
Just because nobody is using right now, doesn't mean that it will
never be useful.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Nathan Wayde

On 04/12/09 02:27, Arvid Picciani wrote:
[...]

Let me illustrate the problem here by construction an argument with a
similar flaw:

"The mouse is inflexible and should be deprecated, as a stylus has the
advantage of being cordless. All modern pointing devices should be
cordless and i think these mouse users are just from the 60s."

You do realise that your argument makes no sense right?


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Arvid Picciani

Ng Oon-Ee wrote:

> What does upstream have to say about this dependency? Does not seem
> 'necessary' to me

http://blogs.igalia.com/itoral/2006/03/30/adding-dbus-support-to-gedit/

priceless finding.

let me sum up:
"
- There is feature X which works very well
- He discovered it doesn't use dbus.
- He starts work on a very complicated patch that makes it use dbus.

"


--
Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Arvid Picciani



On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 10:04:16PM -0200, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto wrote:

The *Kit family maybe could be replaced by a good set of ACLs, but
even that can be problematic, as not all the concepts that are
configured by PolicyKit or ConsoleKit are files. And the Unix security
model of Users/Groups/Others is not very flexible, beyond some simple
cases. 


Let me illustrate the problem here by construction an argument with a 
similar flaw:


"The mouse is inflexible and should be deprecated, as a stylus has the 
advantage of being cordless. All modern pointing devices should be 
cordless and i think these mouse users are just from the 60s."


f...@kokkinizita.net wrote:

It's a lot more flexible than you'd imagine. It has been
used with success to manage systems with thousands of users.
If that is possible, do you really think that a managing a
simple personal computer requires anything new ?


It all adds up. Been on one of their conferences? A man with my patience 
can easily go into stabbing mode there. The amount of clueless people 
clearly outnumbered any available resources to cluebat them.


Eternal September is a pattern, not an event.

Someone is propably going to whine about me being offensive again, so i 
added cake:










not.

--
Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 11:07 PM,   wrote:
>> (about XML)  With time, you end up grasping it
>> as you do with normal text.
>
> That's no reason to accept it. With time you would
> adjust to being tortured each day at 6PM as well.

:)

> I don't agree. There's lots of blind belief, ignorance,
> misguided ambitions, tribal dynamics, and plain lazyness.

Blind belief is a two handed way. As the old saying goes "I'm not
stubborn. Stubborn is who argues with me". Lazyness is inherent to any
programmer. If we weren't, we would still be patching panels with
cords and reading the output in those beautiful little lamps.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Ty John
On Fri, 4 Dec 2009 00:31:39 +
Pierre Chapuis  wrote:

> Le Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:33:38 +1030,
> Ty John  a écrit :
> 
> > I don't really understand what this project does other than being
> > able to execute Plan 9 binaries.
> > What's the point then?
> 
> The point is to have a Plan 9 userspace on the Linux kernel (which is
> maintained and mainstream), instead of the GNU userspace (which is
> -arguably- not unixy enough).
> 
> It makes it Linux, but not GNU/Linux (a bit like Android).
> 

Oh thanks for that. It has me interested now but I won't send this
thread OT ;)


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread fons
On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 10:04:16PM -0200, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto wrote:

> ... (though I remember from Linux Audio Users list that you
> don't like Qt too :))

It is completely irrelevant if I like it or not.
If dbus is intended for 'general use' it should
use C types, not those of whatever toolkit. Authors
who don't use that toolkit should not be forced to
depend on it, in particular not if nothing is gained
by doing so.
 
> (about XML)  With time, you end up grasping it
> as you do with normal text.

That's no reason to accept it. With time you would
adjust to being tortured each day at 6PM as well.
 
> > - It is being abused in major ways. Any app that
> >  uses it to 'enhance the user experience' should
> >  be able to work without it just doing its core
> >  function, but in almost all cases things are not
> >  implemented that way.
> 
> That's something that should be discussed with the developers.
> But they probably have good reasons to use it, or they wouldn't
> do, isn't it?

I don't agree. There's lots of blind belief, ignorance,
misguided ambitions, tribal dynamics, and plain lazyness.
 
> Again, we don't need to be stuck in the past just for the
> sake of it.

Not being stuck in the past doesn't imply you have to
accept something just because it's new and the current
fad.

> The *Kit family maybe could be replaced by a good set of ACLs, but
> even that can be problematic, as not all the concepts that are
> configured by PolicyKit or ConsoleKit are files. And the Unix security
> model of Users/Groups/Others is not very flexible, beyond some simple
> cases.

It's a lot more flexible than you'd imagine. It has been
used with success to manage systems with thousands of users.
If that is possible, do you really think that a managing a
simple personal computer requires anything new ?

Ciao,

-- 
FA


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Pierre Chapuis
Le Fri, 4 Dec 2009 10:33:38 +1030,
Ty John  a écrit :

> I don't really understand what this project does other than being able
> to execute Plan 9 binaries.
> What's the point then?

The point is to have a Plan 9 userspace on the Linux kernel (which is
maintained and mainstream), instead of the GNU userspace (which is
-arguably- not unixy enough).

It makes it Linux, but not GNU/Linux (a bit like Android).

-- 
catwell


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Arvid Picciani

Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
have to say about this dependency? 


what i didn't mention, but is apparantly nessesary, is that i was 
actually deep involved into the whole foodchain of kde and gnome before 
they started acting like kids and thought they need to copy windows for 
the greater good.


The Gedit author failed to recognise the problem alltogether, even after 
explaining,...


Does not seem

'necessary' to me, but depending on the app's structure the choice could
be between:-
a) some new feature which requires dbus
b) not having the feature


.. that singleton patterns have been around for ages and have in fact 
nothing to do with dbus, doesnt depend on dbus, and is easier to 
implement without dbus.



Which would then lead to the question whether the app's design allows
dbus to be loaded only when necessary instead of linked at compile-time.


It's a non technical issue. The patch is 4 lines.


I doubt many apps are designed to allow dbus to be used 'if and only if
available' at run-time?


Its the general mindset that every each and one of us should be forced 
to accept the global thruth.



--
Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 7:55 PM,   wrote:
> - It uses glib types instead of the plain C ones.
>  So it smells GNOME from the start. Why should
>  an app that has nothing to do with GNOME be
>  forced to use its headers ?

DBus as a protocol is language independent. It defines the format the
types must be converted to be able to pass between applications
written in different languages. The DBus library uses GLib for its
main loop implementation. There's DBus in Qt, which uses the Qt main
loop, I think. (though I remember from Linux Audio Users list that you
don't like Qt too :))

> - It uses XML configuration, no system tool should
>  do that - it's bloated, ugly, and in most cases
>  impossible to read. No system tool should depend
>  on the presence of XML libraries.

That's a matter of taste. I work with Java, so I'm not the ideal
person to talk about XML :) I don't love it too, but it's not the
worst thing of the planet. With time, you end up grasping it as you do
with normal text.

> - It is being abused in major ways. Any app that
>  uses it to 'enhance the user experience' should
>  be able to work without it just doing its core
>  function, but in almost all cases things are not
>  implemented that way.

That's something that should be discussed with the developers. But
they probably have good reasons to use it, or they wouldn't do, isn't
it?

> The latter is part of a culture that dictates that
> everything should be automatic and based on what
> 'most' users prefer. Could be, but that is no reason
> to force these things on those who don't want them.
> And in almost all cases it is impossible to change
> this behaviour, any attempt at manaul configuration
> is viewed as an attack on the system.
>
> That said, dbus is probably one of the minor evils
> originating at freedesktop.org. The Kit family is
> much worse.

I must say that I respect your opinion and am a big fan of your
programs, namely Aelous. Your technical skills are astounding and your
programming experience is way bigger than mine. But I also must say
that I disagree strongly with you in these paragraphs. Again, we don't
need to be stuck in the past just for the sake of it.

The *Kit family maybe could be replaced by a good set of ACLs, but
even that can be problematic, as not all the concepts that are
configured by PolicyKit or ConsoleKit are files. And the Unix security
model of Users/Groups/Others is not very flexible, beyond some simple
cases.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Ty John
On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 22:58:08 +
Pierre Chapuis  wrote:

> Le Thu, 3 Dec 2009 20:41:26 -0200,
> Denis A. Altoé Falqueto  a écrit :
> 
> > On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Arvid Picciani  wrote:
> > > Aaron Griffin wrote:
> > > "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it,
> > > poorly." – Henry Spencer
> > 
> > "And those who do understand it are doomed to implement it right,
> > that's why there is Plan 9." - Me.
> > 
> > :) (For those who don't know, Plan 9 was made by the some of people
> > who created Unix.)
> 
> By the way, we could have both: http://www.glendix.org/
> 

I don't really understand what this project does other than being able
to execute Plan 9 binaries.
What's the point then?


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Ng Oon-Ee
On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 00:52 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> Pierre Chapuis wrote:
> 
> > Take gedit for example. It is a text editor, and:
> > 
> > [23:44 TA|catwell] ldd $(which gedit) | grep dbus
> > libdbus-glib-1.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdbus-glib-1.so.2 
> > (0x7f5df48bb000)
> > libdbus-1.so.3 => /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.3 (0x7f5df467c000)
> > 
> > AFAIK it uses dbus only to communicate with itself (between its instances).
> > There is no iteroperability problem, so D-Bus is not that useful to me.
> > But then again, maybe I don't know how gedit works well enough to judge...
> > 
> 
> 
> funny thing:  gedit is the first time i noticed the problem.
> then i went emacs, and now emacs depends on dbus.
> 
What does upstream have to say about this dependency? Does not seem
'necessary' to me, but depending on the app's structure the choice could
be between:-
a) some new feature which requires dbus
b) not having the feature
Which would then lead to the question whether the app's design allows
dbus to be loaded only when necessary instead of linked at compile-time.
I doubt many apps are designed to allow dbus to be used 'if and only if
available' at run-time?



Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Arvid Picciani

Pierre Chapuis wrote:


Take gedit for example. It is a text editor, and:

[23:44 TA|catwell] ldd $(which gedit) | grep dbus
libdbus-glib-1.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdbus-glib-1.so.2 
(0x7f5df48bb000)
libdbus-1.so.3 => /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.3 (0x7f5df467c000)

AFAIK it uses dbus only to communicate with itself (between its instances).
There is no iteroperability problem, so D-Bus is not that useful to me.
But then again, maybe I don't know how gedit works well enough to judge...




funny thing:  gedit is the first time i noticed the problem.
then i went emacs, and now emacs depends on dbus.

--
Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Pierre Chapuis
Le Thu, 3 Dec 2009 21:58:25 +0100,
Xavier  a écrit :

> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Pierre Chapuis  wrote:
> >
> > I like D-Bus because it can actually simplify the applications that
> > rely on it and avoid reiventing the wheel. But I do agree that
> > applications that *don't* need to communicate with other applications
> > have no reason to be linked against it!
> >
> 
> Is there any application that actually does that ?

Take gedit for example. It is a text editor, and:

[23:44 TA|catwell] ldd $(which gedit) | grep dbus
libdbus-glib-1.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdbus-glib-1.so.2 
(0x7f5df48bb000)
libdbus-1.so.3 => /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.3 (0x7f5df467c000)

AFAIK it uses dbus only to communicate with itself (between its instances).
There is no iteroperability problem, so D-Bus is not that useful to me.
But then again, maybe I don't know how gedit works well enough to judge...

-- 
catwell


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Ng Oon-Ee
On Thu, 2009-12-03 at 22:55 +0100, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 11:29:51AM -0600, Aaron Griffin wrote:
> 
> > Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
> > with other programs. dbus is just another way to do it that has a
> > smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
> > actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
> > better".
> > 
> > That's why I dislike it.
> 
> I agree, and there is more.

Isn't it in the nature of programmers and people in general to have just
enough egotism to say "I can do better"? Progress is based on that. In
dbus' case it seems (to this ignorant user) that the attempt was to have
a single system which everyone could use. Or in other words, world
domination. Which is the goal of most software tools, to be so good that
noone would use anything else.

> - It uses glib types instead of the plain C ones.
>   So it smells GNOME from the start. Why should
>   an app that has nothing to do with GNOME be
>   forced to use its headers ?

Sorry, unable to comment on the programming details. Aren't glib types
basically C ones with a bit of added checks though?

> - It uses XML configuration, no system tool should
>   do that - it's bloated, ugly, and in most cases
>   impossible to read. No system tool should depend
>   on the presence of XML libraries.

I dislike reading XML, and editing it. It does have some advantages,
however (else it wouldn't exists). Chief among them, I think, is the
ease of (and availability of tools to) parse automatically. In this
case, as with other software, the devs chose a config to run with and
did it. End-of, in my opinion.

> - It is being abused in major ways. Any app that 
>   uses it to 'enhance the user experience' should
>   be able to work without it just doing its core
>   function, but in almost all cases things are not
>   implemented that way.
> 
> The latter is part of a culture that dictates that
> everything should be automatic and based on what
> 'most' users prefer. Could be, but that is no reason
> to force these things on those who don't want them.
> And in almost all cases it is impossible to change
> this behaviour, any attempt at manaul configuration
> is viewed as an attack on the system.

I would tend to agree here, but the bigger cultural thing is what is the
issue. Apps, like it or not, are dealing with the profusion of choice on
Linux by tying themselves to a single base-point. Currently, that
base-point happens to be Gnome, sole-ly due to user numbers. From the
viewpoint of app designers, they only expect their creations to be used
on Gnome, that's all they test for, and everyone else can go patch
themselves a new one.

Not right, but when you're basically writing apps selfishly for
yourselves (as most do in Linux), its the prerogative of the developer.
As previously mentioned, the main problem would be that apps which don't
have to depend on it do. This should be solved at the individual app
level, not by wishing dbus didn't exist. Or lobbying for it to be
removed.

Agreed that manual configuration should ALWAYS be possible. Am not sure
how much configuration is needed for an IPC however, which is not
normally (if at all) user-visible.

> That said, dbus is probably one of the minor evils
> originating at freedesktop.org. The Kit family is
> much worse.
> 
> Ciao,
> 
Different discussion =). Now THAT would be interesting.



Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Pierre Chapuis
Le Thu, 3 Dec 2009 20:41:26 -0200,
Denis A. Altoé Falqueto  a écrit :

> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Arvid Picciani  wrote:
> > Aaron Griffin wrote:
> > "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." –
> > Henry Spencer
> 
> "And those who do understand it are doomed to implement it right,
> that's why there is Plan 9." - Me.
> 
> :) (For those who don't know, Plan 9 was made by the some of people
> who created Unix.)

By the way, we could have both: http://www.glendix.org/

-- 
catwell


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Arvid Picciani  wrote:
> Aaron Griffin wrote:
> "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." –
> Henry Spencer

"And those who do understand it are doomed to implement it right,
that's why there is Plan 9." - Me.

:) (For those who don't know, Plan 9 was made by the some of people
who created Unix.)

Linux is not Unix, it is a clone. We don't need to be eternally tied
to historical ideas from the 70's and early 80's. Unix is not a
perfect system, there's no such thing, by the way. We should be
struggling to evolve it so that we have less work maintaining it,
without losing the strong technical foundation that we all love. Our
time is way precious to spend in configuration files that could be
easily discovered by the system. I agree, though, that should be some
way to manual tweaking, if needed so.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?
---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Raghavendra Prabhu
Yeah, XML configuration sucks..(reason for me not using Openbox).

Regarding 'kit' family, it originated from Fedora.. In new Fedora 12, they
have added few more of those kits(like PackageKit)...  :)...

One of the reasons these things got added by default maybe that majority of
RedHat/Fedora/Ubuntu/Mainline developers  also work on gnome/kde
libraries.So those libraries gradually became fat with 'developer'
contributions.

One recent development may be that Debian ditched glibc for eglibc.(some
glibc dev were too egotistic to make any changes)
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Debian-changes-from-GLIBC-to-EGLIBC-741455.html

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:25 AM,  wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 11:29:51AM -0600, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>
> > Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
> > with other programs. dbus is just another way to do it that has a
> > smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
> > actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
> > better".
> >
> > That's why I dislike it.
>
> I agree, and there is more.
>
> - It uses glib types instead of the plain C ones.
>  So it smells GNOME from the start. Why should
>  an app that has nothing to do with GNOME be
>  forced to use its headers ?
> - It uses XML configuration, no system tool should
>  do that - it's bloated, ugly, and in most cases
>  impossible to read. No system tool should depend
>  on the presence of XML libraries.
> - It is being abused in major ways. Any app that
>  uses it to 'enhance the user experience' should
>  be able to work without it just doing its core
>  function, but in almost all cases things are not
>  implemented that way.
>
> The latter is part of a culture that dictates that
> everything should be automatic and based on what
> 'most' users prefer. Could be, but that is no reason
> to force these things on those who don't want them.
> And in almost all cases it is impossible to change
> this behaviour, any attempt at manaul configuration
> is viewed as an attack on the system.
>
> That said, dbus is probably one of the minor evils
> originating at freedesktop.org. The Kit family is
> much worse.
>
> Ciao,
>
> --
> FA
>


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread fons
On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 11:29:51AM -0600, Aaron Griffin wrote:

> Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
> with other programs. dbus is just another way to do it that has a
> smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
> actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
> better".
> 
> That's why I dislike it.

I agree, and there is more.

- It uses glib types instead of the plain C ones.
  So it smells GNOME from the start. Why should
  an app that has nothing to do with GNOME be
  forced to use its headers ?
- It uses XML configuration, no system tool should
  do that - it's bloated, ugly, and in most cases
  impossible to read. No system tool should depend
  on the presence of XML libraries.
- It is being abused in major ways. Any app that 
  uses it to 'enhance the user experience' should
  be able to work without it just doing its core
  function, but in almost all cases things are not
  implemented that way.

The latter is part of a culture that dictates that
everything should be automatic and based on what
'most' users prefer. Could be, but that is no reason
to force these things on those who don't want them.
And in almost all cases it is impossible to change
this behaviour, any attempt at manaul configuration
is viewed as an attack on the system.

That said, dbus is probably one of the minor evils
originating at freedesktop.org. The Kit family is
much worse.

Ciao,

-- 
FA


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Raghavendra Prabhu
I never had dbus crashing anytime.. Regarding communication channels - there
are two types in dbus - one is system and other is userland.. So dbus
provided something for userland apps which could not use IPC for some
reason.

Another main reason as pointed above, it is general pub/sub system - which
wasn't there before, and it is quite generic in that publishing to an
interface works(need not know underlying stuff).

Regarding bad experiences with dbus, it is the application's fault. If app
is having problem with dbus, then compile that app without dbus. If that
doesnt work then ditch that application. (send flame mail to app creator :)
if you are over pissed)



On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 2:45 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

> On 12/03/2009 12:29 PM, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>
>> Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
>> with other programs. dbus is just another way to do it that has a
>> smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
>> actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
>> better".
>>
>> That's why I dislike it.
>>
>
> I'll preface this by right up front saying that my knowledge of dbus is
> actually pretty limited.  So forgive me if I'm off-base in my comments.
>
> But frankly, I didn't think the *intent* behind dbus was as a replacement
> for IPC.  As I understood it, dbus was intended to be a system-wide message
> bus - i.e., a very generic pub/sub type of system that could be used by any
> component in the system.  Some components would publish messages of a
> particular, and other components would get notified about messages of a type
> they're interested in and react to them.
>
> Makes some sense to me to do things this way, as then you can just have a
> single, standard system-wide daemon that every app interacts with in the
> same way, rather than force each app to reinvent the wheel and implement
> their own solution.
>
> DR
>


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread David Rosenstrauch

On 12/03/2009 12:29 PM, Aaron Griffin wrote:

Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
with other programs. dbus is just another way to do it that has a
smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
better".

That's why I dislike it.


I'll preface this by right up front saying that my knowledge of dbus is 
actually pretty limited.  So forgive me if I'm off-base in my comments.


But frankly, I didn't think the *intent* behind dbus was as a 
replacement for IPC.  As I understood it, dbus was intended to be a 
system-wide message bus - i.e., a very generic pub/sub type of system 
that could be used by any component in the system.  Some components 
would publish messages of a particular, and other components would get 
notified about messages of a type they're interested in and react to them.


Makes some sense to me to do things this way, as then you can just have 
a single, standard system-wide daemon that every app interacts with in 
the same way, rather than force each app to reinvent the wheel and 
implement their own solution.


DR


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Xavier
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Pierre Chapuis  wrote:
>
> I like D-Bus because it can actually simplify the applications that
> rely on it and avoid reiventing the wheel. But I do agree that
> applications that *don't* need to communicate with other applications
> have no reason to be linked against it!
>

Is there any application that actually does that ?

Anyway, I don't think this is the most appropriate place to discuss dbus.
And what I am going to say is mainly addressed to all the dbus/hal
haters out there :
If you want to be serious about it, go have a true technical
discussion with the REAL developers who know the HOW and WHY of all
these softwares. Otherwise you are just ignorant whiners talking to
other ignorant people :)

I would *LOVE* to see this Arvid genius proving to the dbus developers
that their implementation is largely broken.


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread David Rosenstrauch

On 12/03/2009 01:19 PM, Nathan Wayde wrote:

On 03/12/09 18:14, Arvid Picciani wrote:

- most software depending on it, will crash when dbus
crashes, or fail to start uncracefully, or behave unexpected.


i've honestly never seen dbus crash


+1.

Ever.

DR


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Dieter Plaetinck
On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 20:32:46 +
Pierre Chapuis  wrote:


> There is indeed a D-Bus protocol [1], and I don't see why anybody
> would be against that, because a protocol is a written document and
> not a piece of software: it doesn't enforce an implementation.
> 

protocols can be bloated and or badly designed.
not saying dbus is, i have not enough experience with it.

Dieter


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Pierre Chapuis
Le Thu, 3 Dec 2009 17:05:18 -0200,
Denis A. Altoé Falqueto  a écrit :

> In fact, DBus is implemented over Unix sockets. FIFOs and sockets
> don't define the format that will be used over them, they are just
> channels of communication. DBus is a wire protocol, as they say in the
> home page. It defines the format the methods and parameters should be
> converted to make the communication viable, as well as an event system
> so that applications can register interest in some activity.

I do not know how D-Bus works on the technical level, but as far as I
understand D-Bus means many things and people mix them up. Here is what
I understand.

There is indeed a D-Bus protocol [1], and I don't see why anybody would
be against that, because a protocol is a written document and not a
piece of software: it doesn't enforce an implementation.

Then, there is a library, libdbus, that implements that protocol. Note
that it is not the only one, D-Bus's home page states that the
implementations of D-Bus for Java, C# and Ruby do not rely on it. I
don't think that's what everybody is targeting either.

Finally, there is the D-Bus message bus daemon. The one you see in top,
here:

3188 dbus 20 0 10664 1028 724 S 0 0.1 0:00.51 dbus-daemon

Actually, there are multiple instances of the daemon running at the
same time. Basically, what they do is route the D-Bus messages between
the applications. This is what most people target, because it is an
extra process running on their system.

That being said, I am in favor of simplicity, I am even often called a
minimalist, but I kind of like the idea of having a unified way to
communicate between Unix applications. I even appreciate the fact that
it relies on a daemon and not on an in-kernel thing but I am also
fascinated by Minix3, so I have a bias towards putting everything in
user space ;)

I like D-Bus because it can actually simplify the applications that
rely on it and avoid reiventing the wheel. But I do agree that
applications that *don't* need to communicate with other applications
have no reason to be linked against it!

[1] http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-specification.html

-- 
catwell


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto
 wrote:
> Actually, I'm mistaken about DBus using unix sockets. In fact, I'm not
> sure if it's true. I'm searching about it right now.

Indeed, I was right [1]. The default transport channel are Unix domain
sockets, but there are unencrypted TCP/IP and a testing transport with
in-process pipes.

[1] http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-specification.html#transports

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 5:11 PM, André Ramaciotti da Silva
 wrote:
> I didn't know that. Thanks for clarification. :)

Actually, I'm mistaken about DBus using unix sockets. In fact, I'm not
sure if it's true. I'm searching about it right now.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread André Ramaciotti da Silva
On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 05:05:18PM -0200, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:53 PM, André Ramaciotti da Silva
>  wrote:
> > I believe these aren't the 'other IPC mechanisms' they were talking about.
> > What about FIFOs and sockets?
> 
> In fact, DBus is implemented over Unix sockets. FIFOs and sockets
> don't define the format that will be used over them, they are just
> channels of communication. DBus is a wire protocol, as they say in the
> home page. It defines the format the methods and parameters should be
> converted to make the communication viable, as well as an event system
> so that applications can register interest in some activity.
> 
> -- 
> A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
> Q: Why is top posting so bad?
> 
> ---
> Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
> ---

I didn't know that. Thanks for clarification. :)


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:53 PM, André Ramaciotti da Silva
 wrote:
> I believe these aren't the 'other IPC mechanisms' they were talking about.
> What about FIFOs and sockets?

In fact, DBus is implemented over Unix sockets. FIFOs and sockets
don't define the format that will be used over them, they are just
channels of communication. DBus is a wire protocol, as they say in the
home page. It defines the format the methods and parameters should be
converted to make the communication viable, as well as an event system
so that applications can register interest in some activity.

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread André Ramaciotti da Silva
On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 04:42:25PM -0200, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto wrote:
> (...)
> 4. There are other IPC mechanisms
> 
> Yes, there are. But I think that each one has some drawbacks too.
> CORBA, for example, is too heavy for simple use (Gnome developers can
> tell a good story about that). XMLRPC needs a HTTP server or something
> like that and the overhead of the communication protocol is not very
> efficient for local use. Maybe there's another IPC mechanism that is
> good, but maybe it doesn't have everything that DBus have (for
> example, activation of daemons on demand).
> 
> (...)

I believe these aren't the 'other IPC mechanisms' they were talking about.
What about FIFOs and sockets?


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Arvid Picciani  wrote:
[...]

Well, let's see:

1. DBus has an user space daemon

I _think_ that this eases the transition of messages between the
applications and the user space bus. This also happens with Jack Audio
Connection Kit. Indeed, clients can't connect to it if the daemon is
started by root and the clients are started by normal users.

2. Some applications don't work if DBus is not started.

This is a possible bug in the application, is not a failure of DBus.
Maybe the developers think that is not feasible to support more than
one type of IPC mechanism, so they choose one and go with it. If you
can convince them to use DBus optionally, and the features that depend
on it can be simply turned off without the application losing too
much, fine. I think that indeed that is the case with X server, isn't
it? It is only a matter of configuring xorg.conf  to disable it (maybe
I'm confusing thing here).

4. There are other IPC mechanisms

Yes, there are. But I think that each one has some drawbacks too.
CORBA, for example, is too heavy for simple use (Gnome developers can
tell a good story about that). XMLRPC needs a HTTP server or something
like that and the overhead of the communication protocol is not very
efficient for local use. Maybe there's another IPC mechanism that is
good, but maybe it doesn't have everything that DBus have (for
example, activation of daemons on demand).

5. DBus is hierarchical

As is your filesystem too. There's a good reason for that. Hierarchy
per se is not a bad thing and in DBus it is well used. It separates
objects in categories, so that functions with different purposes don't
get mixed in a big namespace. Maybe you don't like the Object Oriented
nomenclature, but it doesn't need to be called like that. You think in
modules, containers, categories, bags, whatever name carries the idea
of a collection of related operations. The fact that it is implemented
as an object or not is not important for the client and the provider
of the service don't need to be an object.

Thanks for the people who posted (and keep posting!). The discussion
is interesting, even if just for the anthropological point of view.
And I'm not yet convinced that DBus should not exist :)

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Arvid Picciani

Nathan Wayde wrote:


what does any of that have to do with dbus in a technical sense?


There are multiple incorrect answers to this.
I'm going to chicken out of this argument, until someone proofreads my 
essay on this topic.


--
Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Nathan Wayde

On 03/12/09 18:14, Arvid Picciani wrote:
[...]

I'll add some additional points:
- it's implementation is large broken.

how so?

- most software depending on it, will crash when dbus

file bug reports and get developers to write proper software.

crashes, or fail to start uncracefully, or behave unexpected.
i've honestly never seen dbus crash but then again i've experienced 
almost none of the issues people often complain about with Linux

- some systems are actually not supported by hal while
they are by udev and have system-v IPCs.

got nothing to do with dbus

- reinventing the wheel and calling it super-boat-2000
isn't going to help anyone. Instead of fixing problems,
people constantly create new ones.

lol

- FDO is hierarchic and polical level.

what

Dbus is hierarchic on technical level.
FDO wishes to provide a better experience to users by
integrating all software nicely into one global truth.
The Foss ecosystem is not hierarchic.
The Foss ecosystem does not require a single truth
to rule them all.
The Foss ecosystem does not require to be competitive
with OtherOs.


what does any of that have to do with dbus in a technical sense?

--

Arvid
Asgaard Technologies





Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Arvid Picciani

Aaron Griffin wrote:


Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
with other programs.


and those don't require a user space daemon.


dbus is just another way to do it that has a
smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
better".



"Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." 
– Henry Spencer



That's why I dislike it.


+1

I'll add some additional points:
- it's implementation is large broken.
- most software depending on it, will crash when dbus
  crashes, or fail to start uncracefully, or behave unexpected.
- some systems are actually not supported by hal while
  they are by udev and have system-v IPCs.
- reinventing the wheel and calling it super-boat-2000
  isn't going to help anyone. Instead of fixing problems,
  people constantly create new ones.
- FDO is hierarchic and polical level.
  Dbus is hierarchic on technical level.
  FDO wishes to provide a better experience to users by
  integrating all software nicely into one global truth.
  The Foss ecosystem is not hierarchic.
  The Foss ecosystem does not require a single truth
  to rule them all.
  The Foss ecosystem does not require to be competitive
  with OtherOs.

--

Arvid
Asgaard Technologies


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Ciprian Dorin, Craciun
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 7:42 PM, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto
 wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 3:38 PM, Felipe Tanus  wrote:
>>       Aaron didn't give any tech reason in his answear, and i don't
>> think someone will do, except the one you already said at your first
>> e-mail(no network). People who don't like DBus find it just
>> unecessary. I like DBus because I belive it unify the IPC in a way
>> others methods can't. It's more a question of taste than tech.
>
> That's what I fell too, though is a little early to jump to conclusions.
>
> The funny thing is that even who is not using a desktop can take
> advantage of a global bus for communication. And if it is standardized
> (even if a de facto standard), is good for everyone.
>
> It is sad, isn't it?
>
> --
> A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
> Q: Why is top posting so bad?
>
> ---
> Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
> ---


I don't think the recent flame-war revolves around Dbus beeing
"evil" or technically unsuited. I've studied a little bit Dbus, and my
opinions can be summarized as:
* another way to do IPC, but oriented towards a Object-Oriented
interface; (of course with the mandatory complex XML configuration;)
* poorly documented; (I refer to libraries and bindings,
tutorials, examples, etc.)
* and maybe *abused* by almost every single desktop application;
* finally adopted by more than a project (mostly Gnome / GTK
related projects); (which is the biggest plus);

Now I think that the recent rants were against this *abuse* of
Dbus, than against the tool itself. By abuse I mean: most applications
require (if enabled at compile time) for Dbus to be running (as a hard
constraint), and break if it's not running or start the dbus process
themselves.

Ciprian.


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 3:38 PM, Felipe Tanus  wrote:
>       Aaron didn't give any tech reason in his answear, and i don't
> think someone will do, except the one you already said at your first
> e-mail(no network). People who don't like DBus find it just
> unecessary. I like DBus because I belive it unify the IPC in a way
> others methods can't. It's more a question of taste than tech.

That's what I fell too, though is a little early to jump to conclusions.

The funny thing is that even who is not using a desktop can take
advantage of a global bus for communication. And if it is standardized
(even if a de facto standard), is good for everyone.

It is sad, isn't it?

-- 
A: Because it obfuscates the reading.
Q: Why is top posting so bad?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Felipe Tanus
2009/12/3 Aaron Griffin :
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto
>  wrote:
>> Hi, fellow archers.
>>
>> I've created a new email with a new subject, so that who wants to
>> ignore this completely, can do it easily.
>>
>> The recent past discussions about DBus got me thinking about an
>> unanswered question: what is technically wrong with DBus? After some
>> time researching about that, I can't find that answer by myself.
>>
>> DBus is just a way to make applications communicate. It can be used in
>> several languages, namely C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, and many
>> more. There are tools for it in bash, although there's some
>> limitations with that, but is very easy to do something fast in python
>> or perl or ruby or...
>>
>> It (DBus) has some interesting mechanisms to activate daemons just
>> when needed. I find this feature very interesting, so that you only
>> spend the resources when you really need.
>>
>> One restriction is that it is not network enabled, so it only works
>> locally. But in the home page, there is a invitation to improve that
>> situation (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/DBusRemote).
>>
>> Anyway, I would like to read what others have to say about DBus, but
>> please give techinical reasons. I don't want to know who likes and who
>> dislikes DBus. And I don't have anything against who dislikes DBus.
>> Everyone is entitled to an opinion.
>
> Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
> with other programs. dbus is just another way to do it that has a
> smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
> actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
> better".
>
> That's why I dislike it.
>

Hi,

   Aaron didn't give any tech reason in his answear, and i don't
think someone will do, except the one you already said at your first
e-mail(no network). People who don't like DBus find it just
unecessary. I like DBus because I belive it unify the IPC in a way
others methods can't. It's more a question of taste than tech.

 []'s

-- 
Felipe de Oliveira Tanus
E-mail: fota...@gmail.com
Blog: http://www.itlife.com.br
Site: http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/~fotanus/
-
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." - Gandalf


Re: [arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Aaron Griffin
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Denis A. Altoé Falqueto
 wrote:
> Hi, fellow archers.
>
> I've created a new email with a new subject, so that who wants to
> ignore this completely, can do it easily.
>
> The recent past discussions about DBus got me thinking about an
> unanswered question: what is technically wrong with DBus? After some
> time researching about that, I can't find that answer by myself.
>
> DBus is just a way to make applications communicate. It can be used in
> several languages, namely C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, and many
> more. There are tools for it in bash, although there's some
> limitations with that, but is very easy to do something fast in python
> or perl or ruby or...
>
> It (DBus) has some interesting mechanisms to activate daemons just
> when needed. I find this feature very interesting, so that you only
> spend the resources when you really need.
>
> One restriction is that it is not network enabled, so it only works
> locally. But in the home page, there is a invitation to improve that
> situation (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/DBusRemote).
>
> Anyway, I would like to read what others have to say about DBus, but
> please give techinical reasons. I don't want to know who likes and who
> dislikes DBus. And I don't have anything against who dislikes DBus.
> Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

Mechanisms have existed for like 20 years before dbus to communicate
with other programs. dbus is just another way to do it that has a
smell of "architecture astronomy" - as if they all scoffed at the
actual ways to do IPC on various Unicies and said "Oh, I can design
better".

That's why I dislike it.


[arch-general] [OT] What is wrong with DBus anyway?

2009-12-03 Thread Denis A . Altoé Falqueto
Hi, fellow archers.

I've created a new email with a new subject, so that who wants to
ignore this completely, can do it easily.

The recent past discussions about DBus got me thinking about an
unanswered question: what is technically wrong with DBus? After some
time researching about that, I can't find that answer by myself.

DBus is just a way to make applications communicate. It can be used in
several languages, namely C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, and many
more. There are tools for it in bash, although there's some
limitations with that, but is very easy to do something fast in python
or perl or ruby or...

It (DBus) has some interesting mechanisms to activate daemons just
when needed. I find this feature very interesting, so that you only
spend the resources when you really need.

One restriction is that it is not network enabled, so it only works
locally. But in the home page, there is a invitation to improve that
situation (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/DBusRemote).

Anyway, I would like to read what others have to say about DBus, but
please give techinical reasons. I don't want to know who likes and who
dislikes DBus. And I don't have anything against who dislikes DBus.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

Thanks.

-- 
R: Porque prejudica a legibilidade do texto.
P: Porque é ruim colocar a resposta de um e-mail antes do texto citado?

---
Denis A. Altoe Falqueto
---