Re: [gentoo-user] udev + /usr

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:24:39 -0400
> Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dbus is an interesting piece of technology and rather useful, it does
> it a disservice to knock it.

Honestly, I really only want to provide reasonable criticism. I just
tend to get hung up on the nitty gritty details and where I think I
see something illogical.

> As Canek posted a few mails higher up, it
> implements a standard messaging layer on top of existing mechanisms.
> You know about the existing mechanisms so you also know that they only
> provide a means for communication, not the language used for the
> communication. And developing a language for every IPC you want to do
> becomes tiresome very quickly.

Don't I know it. I have to maintain proprietary, network binary
protocols passing data between propriety applications I also maintain.
I don't _like_ that architecture in the slightest, but it's what I get
paid for.

>
> As an analogy (albeit a poor one) dbus relates to IPC as TCP relates to
> IP - all the boring plumbing underneath your communication that makes it
> work at all is already there. It would work best if dbus doesn't become
> yet another way to do IPC, but replaces many of them. Imagine how
> much unbloat you could accomplish if you could remove all the little
> bits of IPC plumbing scattered throughout the average Unix system's
> codebase.

There's the terminology confusion that I got hung up on in the last
email; D-Bus is a higher-level IPC mechanism than the ones it's
implemented on top of.

> There are many code projects out there that deserves to be maligned to
> the point of painful death, then killed. But I honestly beleive dbus is
> not one of them.

There are two principle things I dislike about D-Bus.

1) It doesn't support live upgrading of the daemon. We discussed the
reasons behind this several weeks ago, as I recall. Transparent
session control handoff is, of course, complicated, and nobody has
seen the work as worthwhile.

2) It comes with (or appears to come with) a Linux-centric (sometimes
even a Linux-only) view. I love Linux, and I would love to see Linux
grow and improve. I also use (and am comfortable with) Windows and
Android (which I would consider Not Really Linux) and other
platforms*. Attitudes and actions which push Linux as the One Ring
smack of 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish'.

That latter point, really, bothers me greatly. Market disruption
happens, and sometimes it's even necessary for advancement, sure.

Other than those two things, D-Bus seems interesting and useful. If it
manages to obsolete system-local IPC mechanisms, that's great. If it
manages to get out into the local network and be used to pass messages
back and forth between my local systems? That's awesome. If it manages
to allow applications to talk back and forth in a secure fashion
between Linux and non-Linux systems? Now we're talking about some real
improvement on the status quo.

* I think I could get by on a Mac, but it's difficult getting past
some prejudices and annoying fanboys I know IRL. It's also difficult
getting past the price tag; I don't see myself buying the hardware or
software unless I intend to develop for them. As for what I use? All
five computers at home run Linux; one Debian, three Ubuntu, one
Gentoo. My fiancee and I both have Android phones.

-- 
:wq