Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Monday 15 February 2010 20:20:53 Enrico Weigelt wrote: J. Roeleveld wrote: And *IF* some application is interested in the such information, why not just using the filesystem ? Because on flash-drives (Which are used in small devices and netbooks) you don't want every single status update to be written to the filesystem. And with minimal memory, I don't want to have a ram-disk gobbling up the memory I have. Why not simply using tmpfs ? Or an specific synthetic filesystem ? 9P makes this really easy, and network agnostic. Netbook: 1GB of ram, with Linux, I can easily run all the software I want , without need of any swap. Can I do the same with 9P? Eg. will I be able to run all the software I use on my netbook without having to spent time on porting it all? Is also all the hardware supported in 9P? Linux supports all the hardware in my netbook. Unless the answer to this is a 100% yes, 9P is never going to be an option. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On 2/16/2010 3:23 AM, J. Roeleveld wrote: Netbook: 1GB of ram, with Linux, I can easily run all the software I want , without need of any swap. Can I do the same with 9P? Eg. will I be able to run all the software I use on my netbook without having to spent time on porting it all? Is also all the hardware supported in 9P? Linux supports all the hardware in my netbook. Unless the answer to this is a 100% yes, 9P is never going to be an option. Just for reference, 9p is not Plan 9, it's only the Plan 9 network protocol/distributed file system, which you can use on Linux with the appropriate file system modules. --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Mike Edenfield wrote: Just for reference, 9p is not Plan 9, it's only the Plan 9 network protocol/distributed file system, which you can use on Linux with the appropriate file system modules. Right. Either you use the kernel module (which now is in mainline for quite a long time), or 9pfuse, or one of the userland libraries around (eg. libmvfs). The basic idea behind this all is to use a filesystem as a primary IPC interface. Files dont necessarily mean things stored on-disk, but streams/communication-channels in an hierachical namespace. (eg. /proc or /sys). This way you have a very simple IPC mechanism using the very same semantics as filesystems do traditionally. That's just consequently using the everything's a file-metaphor. As everything's a file, all an OS or an distributed environment has to provide is dispatching filesystem operations from client to server, whereever they may actually reside. For example, you can simply mount any Plan9 device via 9P, from anywhere, as long as you get some 9P path there. (BTW: 9P doesnt have the concept of ioctl()s. If some object has more than just a single IO stream, it's modeled as an directory, eg. containing some ctl file accepting additional commands, etc). cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Mike Edenfield wrote: I'm kinda stunned that your arguments against D-Bus seems to boil down to just use 9p instead No, we're talking about very different concepts. D-Bus is essentially an generic RPC mechanism (with an asychronous signalling facility). So it allows calling procedures on remote objects sending signals to listeners. IOW: fundamental concept behind GObject, QObject, etc put onto distributed level (but much simpler than CORBA, etc). On the other hand, 9P is essentially just a filesystem protocol which is very well suited for synthetic filesystems. The latter is the key point: synthetic filesystem. Instead of calling procedures, you model objects into directories and files and simply work with common filesystem operations. This is the same idea as behind procfs or sysfs, but on an distributed level. Hopefully, we agree that procfs and sysfs are a simple and easy approach for accessing many many kernel-internal data using very standard filesystem operations. Now imagine we hadn't them, but needed to use separate syscalls or netlink operations. Wouldn't it be ugly ? given that plumber is a basic element of 9p and does essentially the same job D-Bus does. No, plumber is an 9P-based service which does the message broadcasting/routing to listeners (easily programmable by an special-purpose language). Since it's based on 9P, it can be used anywhere 9P is available, fully platform independent and network agnostic. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/plumb.html cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sunday 14 February 2010 15:27:45 Enrico Weigelt wrote: Neil Bothwick wrote: snipped And *IF* some application is interested in the such information, why not just using the filesystem ? Because on flash-drives (Which are used in small devices and netbooks) you don't want every single status update to be written to the filesystem. And with minimal memory, I don't want to have a ram-disk gobbling up the memory I have. A simple message passed to apps which are listening is much better. It's short-lived and only uses (minimal) resources when the message is broadcast. After that, it doesn't linger, unless I am running an app that stores these messages somewhere. (Probably a debugger) -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
J. Roeleveld wrote: And *IF* some application is interested in the such information, why not just using the filesystem ? Because on flash-drives (Which are used in small devices and netbooks) you don't want every single status update to be written to the filesystem. And with minimal memory, I don't want to have a ram-disk gobbling up the memory I have. Why not simply using tmpfs ? Or an specific synthetic filesystem ? 9P makes this really easy, and network agnostic. cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On 2/15/2010 2:20 PM, Enrico Weigelt wrote: J. Roeleveld wrote: And *IF* some application is interested in the such information, why not just using the filesystem ? Because on flash-drives (Which are used in small devices and netbooks) you don't want every single status update to be written to the filesystem. And with minimal memory, I don't want to have a ram-disk gobbling up the memory I have. Why not simply using tmpfs ? Or an specific synthetic filesystem ? 9P makes this really easy, and network agnostic. I'm kinda stunned that your arguments against D-Bus seems to boil down to just use 9p instead given that plumber is a basic element of 9p and does essentially the same job D-Bus does. So you're just swapping one system-wide general-purpose IPC service out for another one?
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Montag 15 Februar 2010, Mike Edenfield wrote: On 2/15/2010 2:20 PM, Enrico Weigelt wrote: J. Roeleveld wrote: And *IF* some application is interested in the such information, why not just using the filesystem ? Because on flash-drives (Which are used in small devices and netbooks) you don't want every single status update to be written to the filesystem. And with minimal memory, I don't want to have a ram-disk gobbling up the memory I have. Why not simply using tmpfs ? Or an specific synthetic filesystem ? 9P makes this really easy, and network agnostic. I'm kinda stunned that your arguments against D-Bus seems to boil down to just use 9p instead given that plumber is a basic element of 9p and does essentially the same job D-Bus does. So you're just swapping one system-wide general-purpose IPC service out for another one? he is just trolling around.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Neil Bothwick wrote: For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. Why should an MUA care about some local interface at all ? It doesnt say anything whether the server can be reached, it's nothing more than guessing, that *might* be fine for trivial setups but can cause big headache in more complex ones. For example: * LAN is up, but remote server is or LAN's uplink down, MUA wont learn about it this way * local mailserver is falsely considered unreachable just because the LAN interface went down There's no way around it: the MUA (or a local proxy) must always check on itself whether a _particular_ remote server is reachable and properly handling that. And *IF* some application is interested in the such information, why not just using the filesystem ? cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Alan McKinnon wrote: Example: You have any old arbitrary email client. A mail contains a URL. Click it. The URL should open in your preferred browser, whatever that should be. Please note that any email client should support launching any browser, whether the dev built in support for it or not. Simply put a simple script in a defined, stardized location. Or use plan9's plumber. Example: Notifications. I have 3 (yes, three!!) kinds of popups that show up here daily. There's KDE's system which is the majority of them, some GTK apps throw popups in the top right corner where I don't want them and them then there's Skype which does it's own thing. God, you gotta love proprietary sekrit apps /sarcasm. The solution is a notification service, apps send their notifications to it and the service does whatever the user configured it to do with the notification. man 1 plumb Just to bring this back to your original statement of Unix philosophy. IPC on modern desktops conforms exactly to the Unix philosophy. On dbus, everything's a file ? cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? use the filesystem ? guess what: I've got a filesystem (a tiny 9p server) which even lets me control the network interfaces. cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Neil Bothwick wrote: You're on a train, it goes into a 3G dead zone, your mailer hangs until it times out, meaning you can't even read cached mails until that happens. Probably fix that broken MUA (or let it run via an caching proxy) ? cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Alan McKinnon wrote: You are assuming that smaller WMs don't need IPC. I believe that assumption to be false. If my belief is true, then your argument falls flat. Guess what, there are even very small WMs that have an IPC, and a very clear/portable/network-agnostic one: wmii uses 9P. By way of example: printing. By no stretch of the imagination can printing be considered to be a niche function. How will an arbitrary app find your printers? There are multiple print server around. So, you could: lpr ? If it's interface is not enough anymore, invent a new one. Perhaps as a filesystem. 9P makes this *very* easy. Multimedia buttons. One of the most confounding things on modern hardware are multimedia buttons. Volume is easy - make it adjust the sound server. man 1 plumb cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Alan McKinnon wrote: However. ELF is analogous (with the exception that you don't have one or two binary apps), and nothing is stopping you from building everything statically, or still using .a Actually, if libraries hadn't been grown that extremly fat, but instead using small tailored ones and moving the redundant complexity to their own services, we perhaps won't need it at all, but would be fine with small static binaries (which can startup much faster). cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: However. ELF is analogous (with the exception that you don't have one or two binary apps), and nothing is stopping you from building everything statically, or still using .a Actually, if libraries hadn't been grown that extremly fat, but instead using small tailored ones and moving the redundant complexity to their own services, we perhaps won't need it at all, but would be fine with small static binaries (which can startup much faster). cu startup time is not dependet on the size, harddisks are way too fast - but symbol resolution. More libs, more work to resolve them, longer startup times.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? use the filesystem ? guess what: I've got a filesystem (a tiny 9p server) which even lets me control the network interfaces. cu great for you. And how portable is your little solution?
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? use the filesystem ? guess what: I've got a filesystem (a tiny 9p server) which even lets me control the network interfaces. cu great for you. And how portable is your little solution? On the front side, very portable *and* network agnostic. You can reach the server from practically anywhere (assuming fw allows it) as long as you can access 9P fileservers (in theory it should also be re-exportable through other network filesystems, even i didn try it yet ;-o). The backend side (the actual interface controll stuff) yet is linux-specific, but it can be easily adapted to other platforms. cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: startup time is not dependet on the size, harddisks are way Assuming you're using an harddisk (or another fast-enough medium) at all. too fast - but symbol resolution. More libs, more work to resolve them, longer startup times. Exactly. And that wouldn't be needed with static executables. Of course this could be minimized by proper prelinking techniques (some kind of JIT for dynamic linking ;-), but that's another topic for its own. cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? use the filesystem ? guess what: I've got a filesystem (a tiny 9p server) which even lets me control the network interfaces. cu great for you. And how portable is your little solution? On the front side, very portable *and* network agnostic. You can reach the server from practically anywhere (assuming fw allows it) as long as you can access 9P fileservers (in theory it should also be re-exportable through other network filesystems, even i didn try it yet ;-o). The backend side (the actual interface controll stuff) yet is linux-specific, but it can be easily adapted to other platforms. don't waste your time - dbis is already there...
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: startup time is not dependet on the size, harddisks are way Assuming you're using an harddisk (or another fast-enough medium) at all. too fast - but symbol resolution. More libs, more work to resolve them, longer startup times. Exactly. And that wouldn't be needed with static executables. no, but with static exes you have to recompile everything everytime a security bug is found. Or some other bug fixed. Oh - and didn't you just complain about bloat? Nothing means more bloat than static binaries.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: don't waste your time - dbis is already there... dbus lets me access my network interfaces via filesystem ? cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: don't waste your time - dbis is already there... dbus lets me access my network interfaces via filesystem ? no, it is ported to different architectures.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: no, but with static exes you have to recompile everything everytime a security bug is found. That's the job of the distro buildsystem. Ah, and that dramatically minimizes the chance that things break apart (i still remember the old times when libc updates tended to be dangerous). Oh - and didn't you just complain about bloat? Nothing means more bloat than static binaries. As already said, all this under the axiom that libs are *small* and complex/redundant things are done by separate services. Perhaps you might have a look at Plan9 and how its done there. cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: don't waste your time - dbis is already there... dbus lets me access my network interfaces via filesystem ? no, it is ported to different architectures. the only thing i have yet to port is the networking stuff. everything else is just plain ansi-c using posix APIs. cu -- -- Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/ cellphone: +49 174 7066481 email: i...@metux.de skype: nekrad666 -- Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme --
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: don't waste your time - dbis is already there... dbus lets me access my network interfaces via filesystem ? no, it is ported to different architectures. the only thing i have yet to port is the networking stuff. everything else is just plain ansi-c using posix APIs. and posix works everywhere ... yeah.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sonntag 14 Februar 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: no, but with static exes you have to recompile everything everytime a security bug is found. That's the job of the distro buildsystem. Ah, and that dramatically minimizes the chance that things break apart (i still remember the old times when libc updates tended to be dangerous). and even better - just introduce a single patch/updated package and everything is fine. What you are describing is maybe nice with gentoo. But a nightmare if you want something stable. Recompiling everything is not an option. Why do you think the whole industry went away from static - except for tiny embedded devices? Oh - and didn't you just complain about bloat? Nothing means more bloat than static binaries. As already said, all this under the axiom that libs are *small* and complex/redundant things are done by separate services. Perhaps you might have a look at Plan9 and how its done there. no, under the axiom of sharable code. The size of a lib is not really important - except if you use everything. But if you compile in everything the lib does on a static basis, all your binaries are huge and bloated.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:27:45 +0100, Enrico Weigelt wrote: For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. Why should an MUA care about some local interface at all ? It doesnt say anything whether the server can be reached, it's nothing more than guessing, that *might* be fine for trivial setups but can cause big headache in more complex ones. I think this thread has had enough people trying to find specific use cases where IPC would not be useful and trying to use that as some sort of justification for it never being useful. You're a little late for the party. -- Neil Bothwick There are no stupid questions, just too many inquisitive idiots. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sunday 14 February 2010 16:40:01 Enrico Weigelt wrote: Just to bring this back to your original statement of Unix philosophy. IPC on modern desktops conforms exactly to the Unix philosophy. On dbus, everything's a file ? You are either ignorant, or trying to be a jackass. Either way, it's obvious you do not underatand Unix philosophy Everything is a file is but one of many engineering concepts underpinning Unix. I really don't have the inclination to delineate them for you, I suggest you Google the topic - it will serve you well in future. Meanwhile, here's the short description of the main principle behind what I said: A large collection of small programs, each of which does one thing well. The one thing an MUA does well is NOT popup notifications but dealing with mail - retrieving it (or causing it to be retrieved), sending it (or causing it to be sent) and displaying it to be read. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sunday 14 February 2010 20:44:32 Enrico Weigelt wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: no, but with static exes you have to recompile everything everytime a security bug is found. That's the job of the distro buildsystem. Ah, and that dramatically minimizes the chance that things break apart (i still remember the old times when libc updates tended to be dangerous). Oh - and didn't you just complain about bloat? Nothing means more bloat than static binaries. As already said, all this under the axiom that libs are *small* and complex/redundant things are done by separate services. Perhaps you might have a look at Plan9 and how its done there. To be fair, Plan9 is Unix done right. For all it's power, Unix (the system, not just the kernel) has some very severe flaws. Why can't I prepend data to a file using any of the common shells? Why are pipes 1 input 1 output, instead of the more useful 1 input same data to 2 or more outputs? Why is the permission model so simplistic? Why is ELF so prone to bloat (or more accurately why do so many compilers generate such large libs?) The answer is because of the available constraints at the time these things were introduced. Partly the amount of grunt available from systems of the time, partly the speed of disks, partly to keep things simple and to an irreducible minimum, with a huge helping of how easy a platform it is to develop on. For better or worse, what we have is what we have and it's the sum total of the past. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: I would like to point out that this is 'gentoo user' not 'talk about any os' or 'windows support'. You might be surprised to learn that gentoo is a linux distribution. So why do you bring windows or apple up? Because most of those millions of users you were refering to are using windows and macos... I met a non-sensical argument with another, as I see it. Gentoo users are hardly millions (although I don't have any figures to back that claim up). the problems, dbus solves, have been discussed to death already. Maybe you should read Alan McKinnons mails again. You seem to have missed a lot. Neil Bothwick's mails are also something you should consider. I have read them all. Again, this is just a matter of opinion; you, Alan and Neil thinks it solves a problem which I don't see. IPC has been working for decades before D-Bus came along it. It just adds another layer (the D-Bus protocol) on top of, for example, unix domain sockets (which is one variant of IPC). For the record I do have D-Bus installed because it's a compile-time requirement for Audacious but I don't run the daemon (Audacious works fine without it). It just sits there taking up space... Which I find annoying. But again this discussion is pointless since the Audacious programmers have introduced this (compilation) dependency. So if I wish to go back to the way it was (before D-Bus) I'd better get hacking! ;-) So let's agree that we disagree on this matter? :-) Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 21:38:21 pk wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: 1. Say stuff it and build a print server into your app. We stopped doing that when DOS fell out of fashion. 2. Support all possible print systems. lpr anyone? 3. Or just use IPC and let dedicated print middleware deal with it. What's wrong with lpr? Not all lot wrong with it really. As long as you use printers from the era when lpr was written, it works just fine. Now go buy the kind of thing managers usually buy - some weird Chinese thing no-one has ever heard of rebranded as an Olivetti where PCL 5 is the only thing you realistically use to get it to print. Use lpr with that. Let us know how that works out for you. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Neil Bothwick wrote: Note that they are inventing a new protocol, not a new idea. Which is basically (if you read between the lines) what I've been trying to say the whole time. Although it may be my english is no sufficient to let that shine through... (English is not my native language). The same as they always talked about, but now they have a common protocol that can work with everything. D-Bus is not so much a new concept but a logical rationalisation of previous, disparate implementations. Yes, but... As I see it this is mainly a convenience to the programmer and no benefits to the users. Which, if I extrapolate, leads to todays nice GUIs/DEs that can sing and dance and includes the proverbial kitchen sink. I use gentoo in order to decide for myself what I need and don't need, in order to maximise my benefit from a linux installation; that means I need to weigh the benefit of a certain function/app against the hardware requirements. If I add another thing that runs in the background (daemon) it does steal resources (however small) and it has to have some benefit to me in order for me to think it worth it. Need I say that I'm a minimalist? :-) Thanks anyway for the rational, down-to-earth, answer instead of a rant. Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 22:14:53 pk wrote: and because of that dbus is a great solution. Single solution for a wide range of problems. Which is pretty much anti-bloat. Great solution to what? What problems? As has been mentioned multiple times before by multiple people: The problem it solves is consistent communication between different applications, removing the need to have that functionality repeated many times by every app that would like to communicate state to another app. Yes, it is a generic bus designed to deal with generic data in a (mostly) transparent way. Yes, if you use dbus for one or two functions only, then you have more functionality than you need. However. ELF is analogous (with the exception that you don't have one or two binary apps), and nothing is stopping you from building everything statically, or still using .a Do you use ELF? And if so, why? If dbus gives similar benefits in a different area, why are you complaining? -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Saturday 13 February 2010 08:39:53 Walter Dnes wrote: Sorry about the delay replying. I'm having major problems upgrading to kernel 2.6.31-r6. On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 04:53:08PM +, Neil Bothwick wrote On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:31:21 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: XMMS followed the original Unix philosophy... it did one thing did it right, namely playing audio. Yes, and if you have a number of programs, each doing one job only, they need to be able to communicate in order to do the larger job. Imagine a building site where the bricklayers, plasterers, electricians an plumbers didn't talk to each other or the project manager. - I run Firefox - I go to live365.com and log in - I click on an icon, and Firefox starts up an audio player, and passes it the appropriate URL. - I start reading/writing emails, whilst enjoying music in my headphones The audio player needs to communicate with my email client because...? It doesn't. But your example is stupid. Apps need to talk to apps. Not all apps need to talk to all other apps. You gave a case where this is so, and somehow this proves your point. It does not, and I shall show you why, with real life people: People need to communicate with people. Without it, they accomplish very little. For this to work, there needs to be a minimum of limits on what happens. Now, there's someone in the basement at my work that refuels the generators. I COULD communicate to him if I needed to but that's unlikely. I am the audio player, he is the mailer. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Alan McKinnon wrote: Is it really so hard to understand that dbus replaces functionality THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE MULTIPLE TIMES? Nope. Besides, it doesn't _replace_ unix domain socket, named pipes etc.; it merely adds another layer on top of them. dbus is a net gain - it takes multiple implementations of similar goals and puts them in one place, reducing the duplication. If you haven't already spotted it, this is the same process of logic that lead to dynamic libraries. Do you consider dynamic libraries to be a good thing? I don't see how D-Bus would be comparable to dynamic libraries, no... It would be more comparable to a specific implementation of a dynamic library, which duplicates functionality from lower level APIs. This discussion is a bit similar to the one we (me and you) had with HAL; you think/thought that the idea behind HAL was good but the implementation was less than satisfactory. I think/thought that HAL is/was redundant. From the looks of it, it seems I'm getting what I want from the new Xorg server release (1.8+) where the X server will rely directly on udev (through libudev) for device discovery. Please see my reply (dated 2010-02-13 11:17) to Neils email for more details. Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:39:53 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: The audio player needs to communicate with my email client because...? This is a relevant and meaningful example because...? -- Neil Bothwick Someone who thinks logically is a nice contrast to the real world. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 09:44:01 Graham Murray wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com writes: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? Why does the app need to know? Browsers normally have an online/offline menu selection and if you try to browse to a site when your network is offline then the browser will generate the appropriate error message. In any case, these notifications are only really of use on a single-homed non LAN connected system. On an office LAN, you may well be able to still access your mail server but a problem means that you cannot access any web sites. A network connection manager tells apps when the machine's interface goes down, not when the gateway is no longer available. You have these two things conflated. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com writes: On Friday 12 February 2010 09:44:01 Graham Murray wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com writes: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? Why does the app need to know? Browsers normally have an online/offline menu selection and if you try to browse to a site when your network is offline then the browser will generate the appropriate error message. In any case, these notifications are only really of use on a single-homed non LAN connected system. On an office LAN, you may well be able to still access your mail server but a problem means that you cannot access any web sites. A network connection manager tells apps when the machine's interface goes down, not when the gateway is no longer available. You have these two things conflated. Which still does not explain why the applications need to know when a network interface goes down but does not need to know when (for example) the ADSL connection (via an external router) to the 'outside world' goes down[1]. As far as both the application and the user are concerned the effect is exactly the same in both cases - the application is offline. If it is considered important to inform the application of one, then it should be equally important to inform the application of the other. If a network interface goes offline then the user needs to know, so as to take corrective action, but I do not think that telling the web browser and mail applications is the correct way of informing the user. [1] Which in my experience, while not a frequent occurrence, happens far more frequently than the network interface going down.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:42:26 +, Graham Murray wrote: Why does the app need to know? Browsers normally have an online/offline menu selection and if you try to browse to a site when your network is offline then the browser will generate the appropriate error message. You're on a train, it goes into a 3G dead zone, your mailer hangs until it times out, meaning you can't even read cached mails until that happens. In any case, these notifications are only really of use on a single-homed non LAN connected system. In that particular example, yes. What's wrong with that? There are plenty of people using laptops on wireless connections. Which still does not explain why the applications need to know when a network interface goes down but does not need to know when (for example) the ADSL connection (via an external router) to the 'outside world' goes down[1]. Who said it doesn't. Those are two separate situations, and a D-Bus aware system can address one of them. Inability to handle the latter is not a valid criticism of the former. That's like criticising a great footballer for being rubbish at tennis. As far as both the application and the user are concerned the effect is exactly the same in both cases - the application is offline. The symptom is the same but the cause, and treatment, are different. If it is considered important to inform the application of one, then it should be equally important to inform the application of the other. If a network interface goes offline then the user needs to know, so as to take corrective action, but I do not think that telling the web browser and mail applications is the correct way of informing the user. So the the network manager has to send a D-Bus message to a notification daemon which then tells the user to put his mailer in offline mode, hoping he can do that before it tries to access the server again? I thought computers were supposed to make life easier for us by automating such mundane tasks. Your suggestion is a little like a washing machine beeping at you to say I've finished the rinse now, switch me to spin instead of just doing it. -- Neil Bothwick Real women don't have hot flashes, they have power surges. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 11:42:26 Graham Murray wrote: Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com writes: On Friday 12 February 2010 09:44:01 Graham Murray wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com writes: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? Why does the app need to know? Browsers normally have an online/offline menu selection and if you try to browse to a site when your network is offline then the browser will generate the appropriate error message. In any case, these notifications are only really of use on a single-homed non LAN connected system. On an office LAN, you may well be able to still access your mail server but a problem means that you cannot access any web sites. A network connection manager tells apps when the machine's interface goes down, not when the gateway is no longer available. You have these two things conflated. Which still does not explain why the applications need to know when a network interface goes down but does not need to know when (for example) the ADSL connection (via an external router) to the 'outside world' goes down[1]. As far as both the application and the user are concerned the effect is exactly the same in both cases - the application is offline. If it is considered important to inform the application of one, then it should be equally important to inform the application of the other. If a network interface goes offline then the user needs to know, so as to take corrective action, but I do not think that telling the web browser and mail applications is the correct way of informing the user. [1] Which in my experience, while not a frequent occurrence, happens far more frequently than the network interface going down. The network beyond the machine is completely outside the control of any app on the machine, that's why it is not checked for. Besides, if the gateway is down, the LAN is usually still up local things are probably accessible. The most common case of the interface going down is the wireless kill switch pressed or the LAN cable pulled out. That's something the user would like to know due to many of them doing it a LOT. The system can send out a notify for that, which apps can chose to listen to or not. The most common case would be a popup saying A cable is unplugged. Mailers can then take themselves offline if they wish, and that ability depends on what the dev decided to support. Just because you don't personally see the point does not mean a. It is pointless, or b. The message bus should not support such things -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? I don't have a network connection manager and I don't need that function in a browser, mail client or any other app. And don't start with sockets. That will result in a nightmare. dbus is a clean I've been using computers way before D-Bus came into action and I never suffered from nightmares... ;-) To me D-Bus is a bit like this: Programmer1: (waves hands in the air) Oh, oh I know, let's invent a new protocol that lets applications talk to each other. Way cool! Programmer2: Oh yeah, it will simplify the situation so much. Let's do it! Pragmatic guy: So, what are these apps going to talk about? Programmer1 2 (in unison): Shut up! Don't spoil our fun by asking such stupid questions! But, this discussion is quite pointless as I see it since the people who program these apps (like programmer1 2 above) are the ones who gets to choose and most people just doesn't bother with the details; they just throw more (bigger, better, faster) hardware in an ever-evolving race. Far from the unix philosophy of KISS. That's at least the way I see it... Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, pk wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? I don't have a network connection manager and I don't need that function in a browser, mail client or any other app. And don't start with sockets. That will result in a nightmare. dbus is a clean I've been using computers way before D-Bus came into action and I never suffered from nightmares... ;-) no, but you also head much less functionality. To me D-Bus is a bit like this: Programmer1: (waves hands in the air) Oh, oh I know, let's invent a new protocol that lets applications talk to each other. Way cool! Programmer2: Oh yeah, it will simplify the situation so much. Let's do it! Pragmatic guy: So, what are these apps going to talk about? Programmer1 2 (in unison): Shut up! Don't spoil our fun by asking such stupid questions! and that is stupid. You obviously don't know what you are talking about. If you start konqueror - for example, it is dbus telling konqueror to start as browser - or file manager. And to load the right kpart. Oh - and that loading of kparts? The messages are sent by dbus.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Alan McKinnon wrote: 1. Say stuff it and build a print server into your app. We stopped doing that when DOS fell out of fashion. 2. Support all possible print systems. lpr anyone? 3. Or just use IPC and let dedicated print middleware deal with it. What's wrong with lpr? Multimedia buttons. One of the most confounding things on modern hardware are multimedia buttons. Volume is easy - make it adjust the sound server. Or you could use keybindings and have the wm do it, or you could send the keypresses to the configured audio app. And which one is that? Many apps do sound, which one will get the buttom focus? Don't have them, don't use them. I don't use wireless on trains either... and never will (unless someone puts a gun to my head). Even minimal WMs have many more such examples. Removing a sane IPC method that can be used everywhere instead of multiple implementations of similar functionality makes about as much engineering sense as claiming you don't need pipes in a shell. But D-Bus is much more than (simple) IPC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-process_communication Oh well... Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, pk wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: 1. Say stuff it and build a print server into your app. We stopped doing that when DOS fell out of fashion. 2. Support all possible print systems. lpr anyone? 3. Or just use IPC and let dedicated print middleware deal with it. What's wrong with lpr? besides being not really usefull anymore? Are you sure you have lpr? Which ones do you have? And do you have it configured for the right printers? What if you don't have lpr but cups? Multimedia buttons. One of the most confounding things on modern hardware are multimedia buttons. Volume is easy - make it adjust the sound server. Or you could use keybindings and have the wm do it, or you could send the keypresses to the configured audio app. And which one is that? Many apps do sound, which one will get the buttom focus? Don't have them, don't use them. I don't use wireless on trains either... and never will (unless someone puts a gun to my head). you not. Millions of people do. Even minimal WMs have many more such examples. Removing a sane IPC method that can be used everywhere instead of multiple implementations of similar functionality makes about as much engineering sense as claiming you don't need pipes in a shell. But D-Bus is much more than (simple) IPC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-process_communication and because of that dbus is a great solution. Single solution for a wide range of problems. Which is pretty much anti-bloat.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: You obviously don't know what you are talking about. And you obviously do? If you start konqueror - for example, it is dbus telling konqueror to start as browser - or file manager. And to load the right kpart. Oh - and that loading of kparts? The messages are sent by dbus. I don't have konqueror nor do I use KDE/Gnome. And never will. Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: besides being not really usefull anymore? Are you sure you have lpr? Which ones do you have? And do you have it configured for the right printers? What if you don't have lpr but cups? Of course I use cups, don't be silly. Of course built without D-Bus support. you not. Millions of people do. And have you counted these millions? Or are you claiming the people who don't care about this functionality too? and because of that dbus is a great solution. Single solution for a wide range of problems. Which is pretty much anti-bloat. Great solution to what? What problems? This discussion has already passed the silly stage... Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, pk wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: You obviously don't know what you are talking about. And you obviously do? If you start konqueror - for example, it is dbus telling konqueror to start as browser - or file manager. And to load the right kpart. Oh - and that loading of kparts? The messages are sent by dbus. I don't have konqueror nor do I use KDE/Gnome. And never will. Best regards Peter K then why do you even care about dbus?
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, pk wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: besides being not really usefull anymore? Are you sure you have lpr? Which ones do you have? And do you have it configured for the right printers? What if you don't have lpr but cups? Of course I use cups, don't be silly. Of course built without D-Bus support. you not. Millions of people do. And have you counted these millions? Or are you claiming the people who don't care about this functionality too? well, just look at all those ubuntu users. Just for starters. and because of that dbus is a great solution. Single solution for a wide range of problems. Which is pretty much anti-bloat. Great solution to what? What problems? This discussion has already passed the silly stage... Best regards Peter K yes, it has. There is no question that dbus is a needed and good solution. Only some people keep this alive.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: well, just look at all those ubuntu users. Just for starters. Hm. And those ubuntu users have a choice? For the record, most people using wireless anywhere are using OS's from Redmond or Cupertino (Apple). They don't care about D-Bus either... yes, it has. There is no question that dbus is a needed and good solution. I do have that question. All I want to say is that this is a matter of opinion. It has nothing to do with solving a real-world problem; I guess you will disagree with me on this as well but you see a problem where I don't... So in all silliness: And now for something completely different... http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode07.htm Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, pk wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: well, just look at all those ubuntu users. Just for starters. Hm. And those ubuntu users have a choice? For the record, most people using wireless anywhere are using OS's from Redmond or Cupertino (Apple). They don't care about D-Bus either... I would like to point out that this is 'gentoo user' not 'talk about any os' or 'windows support'. You might be surprised to learn that gentoo is a linux distribution. So why do you bring windows or apple up? yes, it has. There is no question that dbus is a needed and good solution. I do have that question. All I want to say is that this is a matter of opinion. It has nothing to do with solving a real-world problem; I guess you will disagree with me on this as well but you see a problem where I don't... the problems, dbus solves, have been discussed to death already. Maybe you should read Alan McKinnons mails again. You seem to have missed a lot. Neil Bothwick's mails are also something you should consider.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:23:41 +0100, pk wrote: To me D-Bus is a bit like this: Programmer1: (waves hands in the air) Oh, oh I know, let's invent a new protocol that lets applications talk to each other. Way cool! Note that they are inventing a new protocol, not a new idea. Programmer2: Oh yeah, it will simplify the situation so much. Let's do it! Pragmatic guy: So, what are these apps going to talk about? The same as they always talked about, but now they have a common protocol that can work with everything. D-Bus is not so much a new concept but a logical rationalisation of previous, disparate implementations. -- Neil Bothwick Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 09:15:59PM +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: as browser - or file manager. And to load the right kpart. Oh - and that loading of kparts? The messages are sent by dbus. I don't have konqueror nor do I use KDE/Gnome. And never will. then why do you even care about dbus? I don't use KDE/Gnome. But I care about dbus because my (new) preferred network manager--wicd--requires it. Not that I mind having it: in fact I find it possibly a useful piece of software. But I just want to be show that it is possible for someone who doesn't even use X to be affected by dbus. Cheers, W -- Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Sorry about the delay replying. I'm having major problems upgrading to kernel 2.6.31-r6. On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 04:53:08PM +, Neil Bothwick wrote On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:31:21 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: XMMS followed the original Unix philosophy... it did one thing did it right, namely playing audio. Yes, and if you have a number of programs, each doing one job only, they need to be able to communicate in order to do the larger job. Imagine a building site where the bricklayers, plasterers, electricians an plumbers didn't talk to each other or the project manager. - I run Firefox - I go to live365.com and log in - I click on an icon, and Firefox starts up an audio player, and passes it the appropriate URL. - I start reading/writing emails, whilst enjoying music in my headphones The audio player needs to communicate with my email client because...? Neil Bothwick If it isn't broken, I can fix it. No comment. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 21:23:41 pk wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? I don't have a network connection manager and I don't need that function in a browser, mail client or any other app. And don't start with sockets. That will result in a nightmare. dbus is a clean I've been using computers way before D-Bus came into action and I never suffered from nightmares... ;-) To me D-Bus is a bit like this: Programmer1: (waves hands in the air) Oh, oh I know, let's invent a new protocol that lets applications talk to each other. Way cool! Programmer2: Oh yeah, it will simplify the situation so much. Let's do it! Pragmatic guy: So, what are these apps going to talk about? Programmer1 2 (in unison): Shut up! Don't spoil our fun by asking such stupid questions! But, this discussion is quite pointless as I see it since the people who program these apps (like programmer1 2 above) are the ones who gets to choose and most people just doesn't bother with the details; they just throw more (bigger, better, faster) hardware in an ever-evolving race. Far from the unix philosophy of KISS. That's at least the way I see it... Is it really so hard to understand that dbus replaces functionality THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE MULTIPLE TIMES? dbus is a net gain - it takes multiple implementations of similar goals and puts them in one place, reducing the duplication. If you haven't already spotted it, this is the same process of logic that lead to dynamic libraries. Do you consider dynamic libraries to be a good thing? -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org writes: - I run Firefox - I go to live365.com and log in - I click on an icon, and Firefox starts up an audio player, and passes it the appropriate URL. - I start reading/writing emails, whilst enjoying music in my headphones The audio player needs to communicate with my email client because...? So that the email program can add a 'tag' in the signature of outgoing emails so that the recipients know what music you were listening to when composing the email :) I have not seen this in email clients, but would not be surprised if some did, but have seen this in IM programs - both Pidgin and kopete have options/plugins to show the music you are listening to in your status.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thursday 11 February 2010 09:31:21 Walter Dnes wrote: On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 02:18:43PM +, Neil Bothwick wrote On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 years, pray tell? Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use interprocess communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily everything. For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. There is too much solution-in-search-of-a-problem here. XMMS followed the original Unix philosophy... it did one thing did it right, namely playing audio. Unfortunately, XMMS was hard-coded to use a now obsolete GTK library. Unfortunately, that's analogous to a business employing 5 people, all of whom do their own thing all the time with no inter-person communication and no co- ordination. Perhaps they might scribble a note on a white board once a day, but that's about it. The successor to XMMS is Audacious. It seems to subscribe to the Microsoft philosophy, and tries to do everything under the sun, and pretends it's a server, which requires dbus. Is it *REALLY* necessary? I used XMMS to play mp3's and Live365.com. I ended up switching to mpg123 for both functions when XMMS was dropped, and then to the Flash player for Live365. I emerged Audacious, but unmerged it when I saw the post-install warning that said not to submit any Audacious bug reports if I don't have dbus installed. Modern desktops are integrated, because that's what users want. Any two apps should be able to inter-communicate wherever that communication makes sense. Example: You have any old arbitrary email client. A mail contains a URL. Click it. The URL should open in your preferred browser, whatever that should be. Please note that any email client should support launching any browser, whether the dev built in support for it or not. Yes, I know there are the xdg* scripts, but tally up the number of things a user would want to work like this, tally up the number of scripts in the infinite number of locations this will take, and then ask the user to pick one. Example: Notifications. I have 3 (yes, three!!) kinds of popups that show up here daily. There's KDE's system which is the majority of them, some GTK apps throw popups in the top right corner where I don't want them and them then there's Skype which does it's own thing. God, you gotta love proprietary sekrit apps /sarcasm. The solution is a notification service, apps send their notifications to it and the service does whatever the user configured it to do with the notification. Note that the user is in control here, the user says what happens with popups and does it in one central place and the apps does one thing and one thing only with it's notifications: sends them. It's like syslogger, letting the app concentrate on it's real purpose (which is not logging, and definitely is not making sure it doesn't clobber log files from any other apps that might be running). See where this is going? Do you need a hundred more examples? When you have arbitrary, unknown (at install time) sources of data that may interoperate with other arbitrary, unknown (at install time) sinks of data, good data modelling says that a known broker of data should sit in the middle, which is generic enough for anything to be able to use it. And the transport for that is dbus. Just to bring this back to your original statement of Unix philosophy. IPC on modern desktops conforms exactly to the Unix philosophy. Apps were moving away from that and were becoming IM clients cum custom loggers cum notifiers cum insert any other crap here. Standardized IPC is moving back TOWARDS the Unix philosophy, not away from it. Apps can now concentrate on their core function, and hand over the integration aspects to something else dedicated to IPC and nothing else. The apps now merely does the minimum required to hand over data to the service via a messaging bus. Which if you look at it in that light, is EXACTLY the same rationale as a syslogger. Do you use a syslogger? Why? If you don;t like all this integration stuff, and you have every right to not like it, then you should uninstall KDE and use Openbox (or similar lightweight WM). These WMs exist for users that do not want desktop integration. One thing you cannot have is the latest KDE without it's integration features. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 22:54 -0600, Dale wrote: chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: what _is_ that?! (Don't tell me, if we ignore it maybe it will go away) On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 08:29 -0600, Dale wrote: I use Seamonkey 2 right now. You may be able to tell that by that pesky line at the top. It appears Seamonkey has a roach or two rambling around in there. Anyway, maybe it is just that the download is making it slow enough that it just cancels the request when it is busy. I dunno. I have noticed tho that I don't get emails for a while when I am downloading something large but if I hit the 'get messages' button, then I get a lot of messages that appear to be time stamped from a good while ago. Maybe this is just a coincidence or something. maybe. It could be that Seamonkey is detecting your network usage somehow, like azureus can, but I would think that emails are important and I doubt would be subject to this idea. Maybe the timestamps are when the message was sent but it took some time to get to you? (happens sometimes). Could also be the senders clock is wrong... Otherwise I'd get a can of bug-spray, spray your cat5 and phone cables and see what falls out ;) It was really bad when I was on dial-up. Of course, you have to keep in mind that I was only getting about 3KB/sec so it was so slow that it couldn't do two things at once anyway. Heck, doing one thing was slow enough. lol I have only noticed it a few times since getting on DSL. I get 80KB/sec now which is still slow by some measuring sticks but it is fast for me. The times I did notice it I was downloading a CD, DVD or something like that. It has to be really busy a while to notice it. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:31:21 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use interprocess communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily everything. For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. There is too much solution-in-search-of-a-problem here. Hardly, IPC is harrdly new, the amiga was doing ti 25 years ago and shortly after that it became available to user scripts. XMMS followed the original Unix philosophy... it did one thing did it right, namely playing audio. Yes, and if you have a number of programs, each doing one job only, they need to be able to communicate in order to do the larger job. Imagine a building site where the bricklayers, plasterers, electricians an plumbers didn't talk to each other or the project manager. In a shall, pipes can be used for IPC, but that doesn't work on a desktop so something else was needed. This has always been true, all that is new(ish) is that D-Bus is now the something else, and it is a global standard. DCOP was good, but it only worked with KDE programs, D-Bus means that your system is just that and not a bunch of programs each going their own way, ignoring each other and duplicating effort. If you want an OS like that, I hear they produce one in Redmond. -- Neil Bothwick If it isn't broken, I can fix it. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:05:46 +0100, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday 11 February 2010 09:31:21 Walter Dnes wrote: On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 02:18:43PM +, Neil Bothwick wrote On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 years, pray tell? Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use interprocess communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily everything. For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. There is too much solution-in-search-of-a-problem here. XMMS followed the original Unix philosophy... it did one thing did it right, namely playing audio. Unfortunately, XMMS was hard-coded to use a now obsolete GTK library. Unfortunately, that's analogous to a business employing 5 people, all of whom do their own thing all the time with no inter-person communication and no co- ordination. Perhaps they might scribble a note on a white board once a day, but that's about it. The successor to XMMS is Audacious. It seems to subscribe to the Microsoft philosophy, and tries to do everything under the sun, and pretends it's a server, which requires dbus. Is it *REALLY* necessary? I used XMMS to play mp3's and Live365.com. I ended up switching to mpg123 for both functions when XMMS was dropped, and then to the Flash player for Live365. I emerged Audacious, but unmerged it when I saw the post-install warning that said not to submit any Audacious bug reports if I don't have dbus installed. Modern desktops are integrated, because that's what users want. Any two apps should be able to inter-communicate wherever that communication makes sense. Example: You have any old arbitrary email client. A mail contains a URL. Click it. The URL should open in your preferred browser, whatever that should be. Please note that any email client should support launching any browser, whether the dev built in support for it or not. Yes, I know there are the xdg* scripts, but tally up the number of things a user would want to work like this, tally up the number of scripts in the infinite number of locations this will take, and then ask the user to pick one. Example: Notifications. I have 3 (yes, three!!) kinds of popups that show up here daily. There's KDE's system which is the majority of them, some GTK apps throw popups in the top right corner where I don't want them and them then there's Skype which does it's own thing. God, you gotta love proprietary sekrit apps /sarcasm. The solution is a notification service, apps send their notifications to it and the service does whatever the user configured it to do with the notification. Note that the user is in control here, the user says what happens with popups and does it in one central place and the apps does one thing and one thing only with it's notifications: sends them. It's like syslogger, letting the app concentrate on it's real purpose (which is not logging, and definitely is not making sure it doesn't clobber log files from any other apps that might be running). See where this is going? Do you need a hundred more examples? When you have arbitrary, unknown (at install time) sources of data that may interoperate with other arbitrary, unknown (at install time) sinks of data, good data modelling says that a known broker of data should sit in the middle, which is generic enough for anything to be able to use it. And the transport for that is dbus. Just to bring this back to your original statement of Unix philosophy. IPC on modern desktops conforms exactly to the Unix philosophy. Apps were moving away from that and were becoming IM clients cum custom loggers cum notifiers cum insert any other crap here. Standardized IPC is moving back TOWARDS the Unix philosophy, not away from it. Apps can now concentrate on their core function, and hand over the integration aspects to something else dedicated to IPC and nothing else. The apps now merely does the minimum required to hand over data to the service via a messaging bus. Which if you look at it in that light, is EXACTLY the same rationale as a syslogger. Do you use a syslogger? Why? If you don;t like all this integration stuff, and you have every right to not like it, then you should uninstall KDE and use Openbox (or similar lightweight WM). These WMs exist for users that do not want desktop integration. One thing you cannot have is the latest KDE without it's integration features. True, but even those using Openbox,
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thursday 11 February 2010 23:40:37 Zeerak Waseem wrote: True, but even those using Openbox, icewm, etc. were introduced to the mess that HAL is, and also to dbus. Sure you can choose not to have hal/dbus/*kit, but then you also choose not to use a growing number of apps that seem to depend on it. The way I see it, they should be optional features. If you've got the useflags set, great. If not, then it'll still be able to compile and run. And what exactly is the problem with dbus? At 2MB, it's one of the smallest apps on my notebook. It's memory usage is miniscule, I have to invoke magic to get it to show up in top. All I hear from the anti-dbus crowd is complaints that it's there and not a single shred of evidence, fact or numbers anywhere to back up why it might be a bad thing. Let's rather all sit down and add up the the potential code and resource REDUCTION from dbus due to duplicated functionality being removed from multiple apps. Complaints that reduce to it's there now and it wasn't there before cannot be valid for that reason alone - inotify is there now and wasn't there before, the resource reduction from it's being added is miniscule compared to the amount of polling we now do not have to do. Many other examples exist. hal is different and in a category of it's own; it's resource usage is very small but the developer screwed up by making it complex for users (for the machine it's actually quite simple). We can fix that, and are - udev. I don't see anyone complaining about it being there now and not being there before. Anyone remember what came before udev? Who remembers trying to figure out devfs? Or MKNODE? Do keep in mind that even simple WMs use some form of IPC (well, maybe twm doesn't). The dev has various schemes he can use from pipes on the command line to named pipes and fifos, or he can use a message bus. Personally, I'd go with the latter even if only becuase somebody else with a proven track record is maintaining it (so I don't have to) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:13:14 +0100, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday 11 February 2010 23:40:37 Zeerak Waseem wrote: True, but even those using Openbox, icewm, etc. were introduced to the mess that HAL is, and also to dbus. Sure you can choose not to have hal/dbus/*kit, but then you also choose not to use a growing number of apps that seem to depend on it. The way I see it, they should be optional features. If you've got the useflags set, great. If not, then it'll still be able to compile and run. And what exactly is the problem with dbus? At 2MB, it's one of the smallest apps on my notebook. It's memory usage is miniscule, I have to invoke magic to get it to show up in top. All I hear from the anti-dbus crowd is complaints that it's there and not a single shred of evidence, fact or numbers anywhere to back up why it might be a bad thing. Let's rather all sit down and add up the the potential code and resource REDUCTION from dbus due to duplicated functionality being removed from multiple apps. Complaints that reduce to it's there now and it wasn't there before cannot be valid for that reason alone - inotify is there now and wasn't there before, the resource reduction from it's being added is miniscule compared to the amount of polling we now do not have to do. Many other examples exist. hal is different and in a category of it's own; it's resource usage is very small but the developer screwed up by making it complex for users (for the machine it's actually quite simple). We can fix that, and are - udev. I don't see anyone complaining about it being there now and not being there before. Anyone remember what came before udev? Who remembers trying to figure out devfs? Or MKNODE? Do keep in mind that even simple WMs use some form of IPC (well, maybe twm doesn't). The dev has various schemes he can use from pipes on the command line to named pipes and fifos, or he can use a message bus. Personally, I'd go with the latter even if only becuase somebody else with a proven track record is maintaining it (so I don't have to) Oh there's not much of a problem with dbus to be quite honest. But that perhaps is a bit of the point, that dbus seems like it might be, as someone else put it, a solution-in-search-of-a-problem. I can see why it can be smart, but I can also see why it's labeled as a bit useless. Particularly when your wm can handle all the inter-app communication that is necessary without dbus. Like said, I don't particularly mind it for DE's but if you choose a wm, often you are willingly choosing to be lacking a few things that a DE does. I think that the issue for the anti-dbus crowd is that it's something that is being forced on them, despite having no need of it. -- Zeerak
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:40:37 +0100, Zeerak Waseem wrote: True, but even those using Openbox, icewm, etc. were introduced to the mess that HAL is, and also to dbus. You're trying to assign guilt by association. They were also introduced to X, hand edited conf files and a faster desktop. Are they all bad too? -- Neil Bothwick There's no place like http://www.home.com signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:37:08 +0100, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:40:37 +0100, Zeerak Waseem wrote: True, but even those using Openbox, icewm, etc. were introduced to the mess that HAL is, and also to dbus. You're trying to assign guilt by association. They were also introduced to X, hand edited conf files and a faster desktop. Are they all bad too? Yes! :p I'm not saying dbus is all that bad, just that it might be a bit unnecessary for a number of users. Which to me means, that it should be something that can be chosen, rather than something that's chosen for you. -- Zeerak
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: Particularly when your wm can handle all the inter-app communication that is necessary without dbus. the problem is the WM can NOT handle all the inter-app communication that is needed by a modern desktop environment. Especially, when you have apps that are just frames around building blocks that have to talk to each other (like for example konqueror, that is just a gui to the dolphin, khtml, konsole, gwenview kparts).
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:53:10 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: Particularly when your wm can handle all the inter-app communication that is necessary without dbus. the problem is the WM can NOT handle all the inter-app communication that is needed by a modern desktop environment. Especially, when you have apps that are just frames around building blocks that have to talk to each other (like for example konqueror, that is just a gui to the dolphin, khtml, konsole, gwenview kparts). But it seems to me, that the apps that need the communication are in DE's. Which is fine, I just think that if you're choosing a smaller WM (Openbox, awesome, JWM, etc.), where there isn't a need for an inter-app communication that extensive, then it's a bit of an overkill really. -- Zeerak
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:53:10 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: Particularly when your wm can handle all the inter-app communication that is necessary without dbus. the problem is the WM can NOT handle all the inter-app communication that is needed by a modern desktop environment. Especially, when you have apps that are just frames around building blocks that have to talk to each other (like for example konqueror, that is just a gui to the dolphin, khtml, konsole, gwenview kparts). But it seems to me, that the apps that need the communication are in DE's. Which is fine, I just think that if you're choosing a smaller WM (Openbox, awesome, JWM, etc.), where there isn't a need for an inter-app communication that extensive, then it's a bit of an overkill really. so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? And don't start with sockets. That will result in a nightmare. dbus is a clean solution to a huge problem. Apps have to talk to each other. The only way to keep it sane is a standardized IPC daemon like dbus.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:03:27 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:53:10 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: Particularly when your wm can handle all the inter-app communication that is necessary without dbus. the problem is the WM can NOT handle all the inter-app communication that is needed by a modern desktop environment. Especially, when you have apps that are just frames around building blocks that have to talk to each other (like for example konqueror, that is just a gui to the dolphin, khtml, konsole, gwenview kparts). But it seems to me, that the apps that need the communication are in DE's. Which is fine, I just think that if you're choosing a smaller WM (Openbox, awesome, JWM, etc.), where there isn't a need for an inter-app communication that extensive, then it's a bit of an overkill really. so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? And don't start with sockets. That will result in a nightmare. dbus is a clean solution to a huge problem. Apps have to talk to each other. The only way to keep it sane is a standardized IPC daemon like dbus. Well how about something with sockets ;) Personally, I don't see a big problem in a network connection manager not being able to tell various apps that they don't have a connection to the internet. If you're offline often you will know it, and if not you have something to look into. But honestly, I don't have a solution to the problem, what I can however say is that my browser and my mail app, are pretty deft at realizing that their attempts to access a server, are in vain, without any network manager to tell them that they're offline. If there is any inter-app communication going on, it's not anything I know enough about to give a qualified guess about. -- Zeerak
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:03:27 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:53:10 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: Particularly when your wm can handle all the inter-app communication that is necessary without dbus. the problem is the WM can NOT handle all the inter-app communication that is needed by a modern desktop environment. Especially, when you have apps that are just frames around building blocks that have to talk to each other (like for example konqueror, that is just a gui to the dolphin, khtml, konsole, gwenview kparts). But it seems to me, that the apps that need the communication are in DE's. Which is fine, I just think that if you're choosing a smaller WM (Openbox, awesome, JWM, etc.), where there isn't a need for an inter-app communication that extensive, then it's a bit of an overkill really. so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? And don't start with sockets. That will result in a nightmare. dbus is a clean solution to a huge problem. Apps have to talk to each other. The only way to keep it sane is a standardized IPC daemon like dbus. Well how about something with sockets ;) because then you need all apps to talk the same 'language'. You also have to built in filters into every app to prevent 'malicious' or damaged messages from doing harmfull stuff. Every app. So from a workload, maintenance and security POV - a nightmare. Oh, and don't forget the wasted memory and CPU cycles because of all the duplicated code. dbus is a clean and simple solution that reduces workload for the devs AND resources needed by the system. A win-win scenario. Personally, I don't see a big problem in a network connection manager not being able to tell various apps that they don't have a connection to the internet. If you're offline often you will know it, and if not you have something to look into. oh yeah, it is just a great thing that the mail app constantly tries to reach servers and then throws errors. Not like this needs zero cpu cycles and zero ram. It is so much worse that the mail app knows that there is nothing to do and that it can sleep on... sarcasm
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 00:56:33 Zeerak Waseem wrote: On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:53:10 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Donnerstag 11 Februar 2010, Zeerak Waseem wrote: Particularly when your wm can handle all the inter-app communication that is necessary without dbus. the problem is the WM can NOT handle all the inter-app communication that is needed by a modern desktop environment. Especially, when you have apps that are just frames around building blocks that have to talk to each other (like for example konqueror, that is just a gui to the dolphin, khtml, konsole, gwenview kparts). But it seems to me, that the apps that need the communication are in DE's. Which is fine, I just think that if you're choosing a smaller WM (Openbox, awesome, JWM, etc.), where there isn't a need for an inter-app communication that extensive, then it's a bit of an overkill really. That's your error in logic. You are assuming that smaller WMs don't need IPC. I believe that assumption to be false. If my belief is true, then your argument falls flat. By way of example: printing. By no stretch of the imagination can printing be considered to be a niche function. How will an arbitrary app find your printers? There are multiple print server around. So, you could: 1. Say stuff it and build a print server into your app. We stopped doing that when DOS fell out of fashion. 2. Support all possible print systems. lpr anyone? 3. Or just use IPC and let dedicated print middleware deal with it. Multimedia buttons. One of the most confounding things on modern hardware are multimedia buttons. Volume is easy - make it adjust the sound server. Or you could use keybindings and have the wm do it, or you could send the keypresses to the configured audio app. And which one is that? Many apps do sound, which one will get the buttom focus? Even minimal WMs have many more such examples. Removing a sane IPC method that can be used everywhere instead of multiple implementations of similar functionality makes about as much engineering sense as claiming you don't need pipes in a shell. IPC is all about, perhaps you have not considered just how far that rabbit hole actually goes. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 01:10:58 Zeerak Waseem wrote: But honestly, I don't have a solution to the problem, what I can however say is that my browser and my mail app, are pretty deft at realizing that their attempts to access a server, are in vain, without any network manager to tell them that they're offline. If there is any inter-app communication going on, it's not anything I know enough about to give a qualified guess about. So do this then: Build a desktop from old ebuilds and tarballs from a time when dbus was not prevalent. Make sure that the result is somewhat comparable to what you like to have now. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Then examine the code for all the major apps you have, find the IPC-type functionality they have and remove it. Rebuild everything. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Compare these two sets of numbers. Then run your new IPC-less machine. Let us know how that works out for you. At the very least you will gain an understanding of just how much IPC is going on even in minimal environments. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 00:21 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: oh yeah, it is just a great thing that the mail app constantly tries to reach servers and then throws errors. Not like this needs zero cpu cycles and zero ram. It is so much worse that the mail app knows that there is nothing to do and that it can sleep on... sarcasm worse than constantly tries to reach servers and then throws errors, evolution will stop you from closing it down or changing the online / offline state, unless you send it a SIGKILL. Very annoying. That's why I started using NetworkManager and the networkmanager USE flag for evolution... -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au You! What PLANET is this! -- McCoy, The City on the Edge of Forever, stardate 3134.0
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, Iain Buchanan wrote: On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 00:21 +0100, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: oh yeah, it is just a great thing that the mail app constantly tries to reach servers and then throws errors. Not like this needs zero cpu cycles and zero ram. It is so much worse that the mail app knows that there is nothing to do and that it can sleep on... sarcasm worse than constantly tries to reach servers and then throws errors, evolution will stop you from closing it down or changing the online / offline state, unless you send it a SIGKILL. Very annoying. That's why I started using NetworkManager and the networkmanager USE flag for evolution... well, evolution is broken beyond help anyway ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:31:26 +0100, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday 12 February 2010 01:10:58 Zeerak Waseem wrote: But honestly, I don't have a solution to the problem, what I can however say is that my browser and my mail app, are pretty deft at realizing that their attempts to access a server, are in vain, without any network manager to tell them that they're offline. If there is any inter-app communication going on, it's not anything I know enough about to give a qualified guess about. So do this then: Build a desktop from old ebuilds and tarballs from a time when dbus was not prevalent. Make sure that the result is somewhat comparable to what you like to have now. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Then examine the code for all the major apps you have, find the IPC-type functionality they have and remove it. Rebuild everything. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Compare these two sets of numbers. Then run your new IPC-less machine. Let us know how that works out for you. At the very least you will gain an understanding of just how much IPC is going on even in minimal environments. Well, I'll have to tell you, that I might just do that one of these days, because like you say. If nothing else I'll gain an understanding of it. As you suggested in the last mail, I don't think I've considered all the different uses of IPC. :-) -- Zeerak
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:47:39 +0100, Zeerak Waseem wrote: I'm not saying dbus is all that bad, just that it might be a bit unnecessary for a number of users. Which to me means, that it should be something that can be chosen, rather than something that's chosen for you. It's not there for the users, it's there for the software. How much better would that software be if the developers spent half their time writing code to communicate, write to logs and all the other standard tasks. Next you'll suggest that filesystems should be optional because the apps can always work out which disk blocks to use by themselves. Don't get me started on compilers, what a bloated waste of resources when apps could be written in hand crafted assembly. -- Neil Bothwick signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:35:10 +0100, Zeerak Waseem wrote: Oh there's not much of a problem with dbus to be quite honest. But that perhaps is a bit of the point, that dbus seems like it might be, as someone else put it, a solution-in-search-of-a-problem. Yes, it could be what one person called it, or it could be the efficient way for applications to share code and resources that a dozen people have described it as. -- Neil Bothwick An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. - Benjamin Franklin signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Friday 12 February 2010 01:52:37 Zeerak Waseem wrote: On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:31:26 +0100, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday 12 February 2010 01:10:58 Zeerak Waseem wrote: But honestly, I don't have a solution to the problem, what I can however say is that my browser and my mail app, are pretty deft at realizing that their attempts to access a server, are in vain, without any network manager to tell them that they're offline. If there is any inter-app communication going on, it's not anything I know enough about to give a qualified guess about. So do this then: Build a desktop from old ebuilds and tarballs from a time when dbus was not prevalent. Make sure that the result is somewhat comparable to what you like to have now. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Then examine the code for all the major apps you have, find the IPC-type functionality they have and remove it. Rebuild everything. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Compare these two sets of numbers. Then run your new IPC-less machine. Let us know how that works out for you. At the very least you will gain an understanding of just how much IPC is going on even in minimal environments. Well, I'll have to tell you, that I might just do that one of these days, because like you say. If nothing else I'll gain an understanding of it. As you suggested in the last mail, I don't think I've considered all the different uses of IPC. :-) A lot of that was tongue in cheek :-) If you do manage to pull off that monumental purge and get something that runs, you'll have enough information to build a PhD thesis around. OK, maybe not a PhD. maybe a Masters. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:53:20 +0100, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday 12 February 2010 01:52:37 Zeerak Waseem wrote: On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:31:26 +0100, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On Friday 12 February 2010 01:10:58 Zeerak Waseem wrote: But honestly, I don't have a solution to the problem, what I can however say is that my browser and my mail app, are pretty deft at realizing that their attempts to access a server, are in vain, without any network manager to tell them that they're offline. If there is any inter-app communication going on, it's not anything I know enough about to give a qualified guess about. So do this then: Build a desktop from old ebuilds and tarballs from a time when dbus was not prevalent. Make sure that the result is somewhat comparable to what you like to have now. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Then examine the code for all the major apps you have, find the IPC-type functionality they have and remove it. Rebuild everything. Note the code sizes and other metrics of complexity. Note resource usage. Compare these two sets of numbers. Then run your new IPC-less machine. Let us know how that works out for you. At the very least you will gain an understanding of just how much IPC is going on even in minimal environments. Well, I'll have to tell you, that I might just do that one of these days, because like you say. If nothing else I'll gain an understanding of it. As you suggested in the last mail, I don't think I've considered all the different uses of IPC. :-) A lot of that was tongue in cheek :-) If you do manage to pull off that monumental purge and get something that runs, you'll have enough information to build a PhD thesis around. OK, maybe not a PhD. maybe a Masters. Hehe, it read :-) I'll be sure to remember that when I have to write my masters, quite possibly also about the same time I'll be done with the purge and getting it working ;) -- Zeerak
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com writes: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? Why does the app need to know? Browsers normally have an online/offline menu selection and if you try to browse to a site when your network is offline then the browser will generate the appropriate error message. In any case, these notifications are only really of use on a single-homed non LAN connected system. On an office LAN, you may well be able to still access your mail server but a problem means that you cannot access any web sites.
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Freitag 12 Februar 2010, Graham Murray wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com writes: so how do you propose that a network connection manager tells a broweser or mail app that they are offline? Why does the app need to know? others already posted examples why this is needed. Also - why should I manually select something, when the system can do it for me? Do you install your files by hand or do you let portage do the job?
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wednesday 10 February 2010 03:29:50 Dale wrote: Well, actually, if hal would have worked I wouldn't have cared if it uses xorg.conf at all. That was the point of using hal. Thing is, I followed the howto and it didn't work. The fact that the config files are in xml only became a problem after hal locked me out of my GUI and required a hard shutdown. hal is a classic Second System Effect case But I thought we thrashed this to death a while ago and all agreed to never speak of this abomination again, while we await the Third System Effect aka DeviceKit? From what I read it appears to be the same guy doing both. Maybe, just maybe, some lessons were learned and it will be a lot better. I'm hoping it will be anyway. I don't care what the config files are if it works. If my hardware doesn't work, then I need to be able to edit that without a rocket science degree. I like watching things shoot into space but I don't want to design or build the darn thing. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:24:36 -0600, Dale wrote: hal is a classic Second System Effect case But I thought we thrashed this to death a while ago and all agreed to never speak of this abomination again, while we await the Third System Effect aka DeviceKit? From what I read it appears to be the same guy doing both. Maybe, just maybe, some lessons were learned and it will be a lot better. Isn't that the point of redoing it? It's when someone else comes along with brand new way of doing things that we get a whole load of brand new problems? -- Neil Bothwick If you cannot fix it, feature it. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Wednesday 10 February 2010 11:38:52 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:24:36 -0600, Dale wrote: hal is a classic Second System Effect case But I thought we thrashed this to death a while ago and all agreed to never speak of this abomination again, while we await the Third System Effect aka DeviceKit? From what I read it appears to be the same guy doing both. Maybe, just maybe, some lessons were learned and it will be a lot better. Isn't that the point of redoing it? It's when someone else comes along with brand new way of doing things that we get a whole load of brand new problems? It really is the same guy. His blog said something to the effect of: hal is a load of crap. I knew it long ago, the other devs knew it slightly less longer ago and the users now know it too. We were trying to do too much and shoehorn too many things into the same boxes that belonged in different boxes. I'm fed up trying to maintain this steaming mess, will not be adding new features, and wash my hands of it. I'll be doing a rewrite called DeviceKit. So kudos to the man for recognizing the real problem, admitting it, and moving onto a real solution. Nothing wrong with making a mistake and fixing it - that's how we learn. Personally, my mistakes teach me MUCH more than my successes - I then know what not to do :-) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:24:36 -0600, Dale wrote: hal is a classic Second System Effect case But I thought we thrashed this to death a while ago and all agreed to never speak of this abomination again, while we await the Third System Effect aka DeviceKit? From what I read it appears to be the same guy doing both. Maybe, just maybe, some lessons were learned and it will be a lot better. Isn't that the point of redoing it? It's when someone else comes along with brand new way of doing things that we get a whole load of brand new problems? That was my point. I'm hoping he sees the weaknesses of hal and doesn't put those in devicekit. I'm hopeful it will be better not just the same old thing with a new name. Speaking of improvements, I'll be glad when Seamonkey sorts out that top line up there. It appears that Seamonkey 2 still has a bug up its butt. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wednesday 10 February 2010 11:38:52 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:24:36 -0600, Dale wrote: hal is a classic Second System Effect case But I thought we thrashed this to death a while ago and all agreed to never speak of this abomination again, while we await the Third System Effect aka DeviceKit? From what I read it appears to be the same guy doing both. Maybe, just maybe, some lessons were learned and it will be a lot better. Isn't that the point of redoing it? It's when someone else comes along with brand new way of doing things that we get a whole load of brand new problems? It really is the same guy. His blog said something to the effect of: hal is a load of crap. I knew it long ago, the other devs knew it slightly less longer ago and the users now know it too. We were trying to do too much and shoehorn too many things into the same boxes that belonged in different boxes. I'm fed up trying to maintain this steaming mess, will not be adding new features, and wash my hands of it. I'll be doing a rewrite called DeviceKit. So kudos to the man for recognizing the real problem, admitting it, and moving onto a real solution. Nothing wrong with making a mistake and fixing it - that's how we learn. Personally, my mistakes teach me MUCH more than my successes - I then know what not to do :-) That's what I am thinking. At least he knows hardware, how to write a program and sees the big picture of how it turned out. That's why I said I hope this new thing will be better. He sees where it got lost and wants to make it better. Kudos for knowing it is better to start from freaking scratch too. Think Bill Gates could ever do that? ROFL Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 10:27:32AM +, Neil Bothwick wrote but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 years, pray tell? -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Wednesday 10 February 2010 14:57:57 Walter Dnes wrote: On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 10:27:32AM +, Neil Bothwick wrote but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 years, pray tell? Because pre-dbus your desktop apps used a mish-mash of all sorts of $STUFF that did the same thing in a spaghetti like manner. KDE had dcop but couldn't talk directly to gnome apps and vice-versa. post-dbus we have a coherent message bus system that is DE-agnostic and supported by freedesktop. Apps get migrated to use dbus instead of spaghetti and things work better. With KDE-3.5 you couldn't just dispense with dcop and expect stuff to work. Same with dbus currently. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 years, pray tell? Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use interprocess communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily everything. For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. -- Neil Bothwick Vuja De: the feeling that you've never been here before. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 years, pray tell? Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use interprocess communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily everything. For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. So that's why when I am downloading something it doesn't check my emails. I was always curious about that. Thanks. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On 2/10/2010 2:12 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 10 February 2010 03:29:50 Dale wrote: Well, actually, if hal would have worked I wouldn't have cared if it uses xorg.conf at all. That was the point of using hal. Thing is, I followed the howto and it didn't work. The fact that the config files are in xml only became a problem after hal locked me out of my GUI and required a hard shutdown. hal is a classic Second System Effect case But I thought we thrashed this to death a while ago and all agreed to never speak of this abomination again, while we await the Third System Effect aka DeviceKit? Last I heard DeviceKit was deprecated before it even happened and they're just going to move everything into udev. --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On 2/10/2010 2:12 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 10 February 2010 03:29:50 Dale wrote: Well, actually, if hal would have worked I wouldn't have cared if it uses xorg.conf at all. That was the point of using hal. Thing is, I followed the howto and it didn't work. The fact that the config files are in xml only became a problem after hal locked me out of my GUI and required a hard shutdown. hal is a classic Second System Effect case But I thought we thrashed this to death a while ago and all agreed to never speak of this abomination again, while we await the Third System Effect aka DeviceKit? Last I heard DeviceKit was deprecated before it even happened and they're just going to move everything into udev. --Mike Well, udev does seem to work at least. lol Maybe the devicekit guy could just slide over and help the udev people? Heck, as long as it works, I'm fine with it. I just don't like having to unexpectedly do a hard reboot. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Tuesday 09 February 2010 23:58:10 Dale wrote: So, hal may be progress to you but it is a step backward for me. It's the opposite of progress. You mean HAL = Congress? Sorry, couldn't resist ;) And now, back on topic :)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Tuesday 09 February 2010 23:58:10 Dale wrote: So, hal may be progress to you but it is a step backward for me. It's the opposite of progress. You mean HAL = Congress? Sorry, couldn't resist ;) And now, back on topic :) Well anytime the Congress does anything, it isn't progress. It never has been. That was hard to resist tho. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
Neil Bothwick wrote: Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use interprocess communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-process_communication http://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/ipc/ipc.html D-Bus is just a YAIPC (Yet-Another-Inter-Process-Communication)... Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 08:29 -0600, Dale wrote: chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. So that's why when I am downloading something it doesn't check my emails. I was always curious about that. that shouldn't be the case - what email client are you using? Evolution supports this (with the networkmanager USE flag*) but it goes offline when all your interfaces are down, not just in use like heavy downloading. * actually the USE flag (networkmanager instead of dbus) and the comments on it suggest that it talks directly to NetworkManager and not via dbus, but I don't actually know. $ equery u evolution ... - + networkmanager : Allows Evolution to automagically toggle online/offline mode by talking to net-misc/networkmanager and getting the current network state -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au She always believed in the old adage -- leave them while you're looking good. -- Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 08:29 -0600, Dale wrote: chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. So that's why when I am downloading something it doesn't check my emails. I was always curious about that. that shouldn't be the case - what email client are you using? Evolution supports this (with the networkmanager USE flag*) but it goes offline when all your interfaces are down, not just in use like heavy downloading. * actually the USE flag (networkmanager instead of dbus) and the comments on it suggest that it talks directly to NetworkManager and not via dbus, but I don't actually know. $ equery u evolution ... - + networkmanager : Allows Evolution to automagically toggle online/offline mode by talking to net-misc/networkmanager and getting the current network state I use Seamonkey 2 right now. You may be able to tell that by that pesky line at the top. It appears Seamonkey has a roach or two rambling around in there. Anyway, maybe it is just that the download is making it slow enough that it just cancels the request when it is busy. I dunno. I have noticed tho that I don't get emails for a while when I am downloading something large but if I hit the 'get messages' button, then I get a lot of messages that appear to be time stamped from a good while ago. Maybe this is just a coincidence or something. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 22:54 -0600, Dale wrote: chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: what _is_ that?! (Don't tell me, if we ignore it maybe it will go away) On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 08:29 -0600, Dale wrote: I use Seamonkey 2 right now. You may be able to tell that by that pesky line at the top. It appears Seamonkey has a roach or two rambling around in there. Anyway, maybe it is just that the download is making it slow enough that it just cancels the request when it is busy. I dunno. I have noticed tho that I don't get emails for a while when I am downloading something large but if I hit the 'get messages' button, then I get a lot of messages that appear to be time stamped from a good while ago. Maybe this is just a coincidence or something. maybe. It could be that Seamonkey is detecting your network usage somehow, like azureus can, but I would think that emails are important and I doubt would be subject to this idea. Maybe the timestamps are when the message was sent but it took some time to get to you? (happens sometimes). Could also be the senders clock is wrong... Otherwise I'd get a can of bug-spray, spray your cat5 and phone cables and see what falls out ;) -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar. -- B. Franklin
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 02:18:43PM +, Neil Bothwick wrote On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:57 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. Then how did things manage to work on my systems for the past 9 years, pray tell? Because nine years ago, Linux desktop software didn't use interprocess communication. Of course things will still work, but not necessarily everything. For example, Network Manager uses D-Bus to tell programs when your Internet connection is available and not, so your mail client goes into offline mode rather than pointlessly trying to access your mailbox. KDE4 uses it quite extensively, ust as KDE3 used DCOP. There is too much solution-in-search-of-a-problem here. XMMS followed the original Unix philosophy... it did one thing did it right, namely playing audio. Unfortunately, XMMS was hard-coded to use a now obsolete GTK library. The successor to XMMS is Audacious. It seems to subscribe to the Microsoft philosophy, and tries to do everything under the sun, and pretends it's a server, which requires dbus. Is it *REALLY* necessary? I used XMMS to play mp3's and Live365.com. I ended up switching to mpg123 for both functions when XMMS was dropped, and then to the Flash player for Live365. I emerged Audacious, but unmerged it when I saw the post-install warning that said not to submit any Audacious bug reports if I don't have dbus installed. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 10:20:47PM +, Alan Mackenzie wrote However, I'm now trying to get X up and running. The X Server Configuration HOWTO, section 3. Configuring Xorg says: Hal comes with many premade device rules, also called policies. These policy files are available in /usr/../policy. Just find a few that suit your needs most closely and copy them to /etc/ For example, to get a basic working keyboard/mouse combination, you could copy the following files... /usr/.../10-input-policy.fdi /usr/.../10-x11-input.fdi . Am I the only person that finds this semantic gibberish? Is there any explanation somewhere of what a policy aka device rule is? What is the semantic significance of a device rule? What does it mean, to rule a device, or what sort of restrictions are being placed on this device? My solution to simplify Gentoo... waltd...@d531 ~ $ cat /etc/portage/package.mask sys-libs/pam sys-apps/dbus sys-apps/hal You'll have to do a manual depclean (very carefully) and revdep-rebuild, but it's worth the effort to purify your Gentoo system. Simpler than that, just add -hal to xorg stuff in package.use and then run emerge -uvDNa world. It will rebuild a couple things, maybe even just xorg, then everything is back to the old way. This allows hal to be their for other things where it does work but it disables it where it doesn't work. I'm not saying your way won't work but I think mine is easier. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Tuesday 09 February 2010 00:20:47 Alan Mackenzie wrote: Hi, Gentoo! I've just got a sparkling new installation of Gentoo on my new PC. It only took me ~5 hours, mainly because I'd already configured the kernel in a trial run. :-) However, I'm now trying to get X up and running. The X Server Configuration HOWTO, section 3. Configuring Xorg says: Hal comes with many premade device rules, also called policies. These policy files are available in /usr/../policy. Just find a few that suit your needs most closely and copy them to /etc/ For example, to get a basic working keyboard/mouse combination, you could copy the following files... /usr/.../10-input-policy.fdi /usr/.../10-x11-input.fdi . Am I the only person that finds this semantic gibberish? No, you are not the only one. There's a whole crowd of us here already, you can join our club. We even have a fearless leader and his name is Dale. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] How the HAL are you supposed to use these files?
On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 21:17:08 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote: My solution to simplify Gentoo... waltd...@d531 ~ $ cat /etc/portage/package.mask sys-libs/pam sys-apps/dbus sys-apps/hal That's as much crippling as simplifying. You can do without pam and hal by setting appropriate USE flags (I run pam-free here by doing just that) but D-Bus provides a standard way for applications to communicate with one another and removing it can stop your desktop working as it should. -- Neil Bothwick WINDOWS: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System signature.asc Description: PGP signature
