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

[Nathan Wayde]

On 04/12/09 18:49, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> Sounds like either this discussion is worth discussing again.
> I'll try hard not to trip anyone...
>
> Jan de Groot wrote:
>
>> Really, you're just having a 100% anti-dbus attitude, but somehow you're
>> fine with Bonobo.
>  > Maybe you didn't know, but Bonobo is worse than dbus.
>  > It's a complicated slow framework with a lot of design mistakes.
>
> I honestly had no idea what it is.
> Looks like the ignorance goes both ways.
>
>  >I think that is because emacs decided to be an operating system instead
>  >of a text editor. Seriously, when I read the last release notes, I
>  >though: "WTF does a text editor need dns-sd for?"
>
> That' why fellow minimalists use vim, and call me a whiner. heh.
> Yeah, there is worse people then me...
> On a related note, i had now contact with lots of people of the OTHER
> side of the argument, ie the minimalists, off list. Sorry to say,
> they're even more retarded, in that some even think glibc should be
> removed ( and replaced with _what_? ) or that they think dbus should be
> removed but then whine about their gui breaking (dude, whats your point?).
> Additionaly i researched on some market players behind dbus. Besides the
> smell of money and taste of blood, there are some professional people
> behind this, who may have an agenda hostile to some people, but they get
> stuff done. And whoever gets stuff done, wins in FOSS world. It's that
> easy, and i have no objection to easy politics.
>
>> Note that a lot of work has been duplicated in applications when they
>> were ported to single-instance applications using dbus.
>
> Err. 10 lines of code? I don't even want to know how much code
> duplication dbus type system implies. But yeah depend on how you argue.
>
> - dbus vs some other non unified crap that does basicly the same:
> clear that dbus wins, since code duplication can't be any useful.
>
> - dbus vs system v ipc
> clear that system v wins, since it worked 20 years ago, still does
> and is ridiculously simple.
>
> Similar some people here have argued that compared to ubuntu, archlinux
> is pretty unix. Well compared to ubuntu, everything wins. That's not
> fair :P
>
>> This has been
>> fixed by using the libunique library.
>
> Which could use standard mechanics instead of something unrelated like
> dbus. But i'm glad they abstracted that into a library, so it can be
> replaced with 10 lines of system v ipc code. I should propably smack
> some upstream people on that one next fosdem.
> Everyone doing their own dbus code and then realizing it breaks would
> have been a serious facepalm, considered that this is exactly what
> people trip on who remember corba. Seriously guys, can we PLEASE at
> least avoid doing the same mistakes again? corba sucks, and anyone
> disagreeing please instantly press the kill button on your MUA, or just
> shoot yourself. University here is inventing an object rpc for java
> right now, and its just corba restricted to java. I'm so raging on
> peoples inability to see past mistakes.
>
> At this moment anjuta, brasero,
>> devhelp, gnome-bluetooth, gnome-control-center, gnome-disk-utility,
>> gnome-power-manager, nautilus and totem use this library for their
>> single-instance functionality.
>
> I'm totally fine with that. I never objected to gnome using d-bus. They
> have a valid reason to do so. The problem is, they don't have a valid
> reason to force everyone else to use it.
>
>> Gedit uses its own complicated way and
>> should switch to this library also if possible.
>
> I have used gedit, but that's my own damn fault. It's all the upstream
> who's been stupid.
>
>  >You're talking crap. Examples of other IPC frameworks are bonobo and
>  >dcop. Both launched the daemon on initial usage.
>
> Well here is your part of the ignorance.
> You're as much qualified to talk about unix, as i am to talk about
> gnome. This isn't going to lead anywhere unless you do your homework.
>
>  >Dbus also launches a sesion bus when it's needed, but for the system
>  >bus, things are different. You can't run a system bus as normal user,
>  >unless you install dbus as setuid root and make some code to launch the
>  >system bus on request.
>
> I have to understand the obcurity behind all this. Why can't they use
> unix sessions? What's a system bus and why can't they use system v for
> that? But well, here's my part of the ignorance again. I don't even want
> to know what kind of ugly code they all ran before dbus. I've seen dcop
> and actually liked it. As long i could just kill it and things still
> worked (well kde tripped on it i think, but thats irrelevant to me)
>
>  > xfce terminal has a patch in our svn for it.
>
> I so raged on that. I mean, its a terminal... thankfully there is urxvt.
>
>  > I don't mind if xfce terminal can't open new
>  > tabs or windows when dbus goes down, but please don't kill the
>  > ones that are open.
>
> Well even then, how are you supposed to fix the problem when you can't
> open a terminal? I mean, if you're a kde user, you can't
> - open a terminal, since the terminal needs dbus
> - open the menu to open xterm, since the menu needs dbus
> - kill X because they disabled that, and only us old timers enable it.
>
> and if you're really unlucky you get dbus to crash hal to crash your gfx
> driver, so your only option left is the power button.
> This is a valid reason why i call people windows users. I can't see
> anyone capable of staying calm in such a situation unless they were
> forced to use windows in life, and are just happy linux doesn't spit
> fire. There were times where we laughed at DOS beeing a cripeled fake
> copy of an OS. And then they won. for some yet to discover reason.
> Maybe they invoked godwin.
>
I'm confused.
You openly admit you don't know much about dbus or how it works and yet 
you continue...

for the record I'm one of those people that re-enable the ctrl+alt 
[backspace] X kill functionality and I assure you I'm not pure enough to 
be a part of your minimalists...

In the event that dbus crashes and I can't open a terminal I do what any 
other non-pretensious Linux user wold do, I ctrl+alt F1..F6 and fix shit 
that needs fixing. Maybe you just forgot, maybe you were just looking 
for an argument, maybe you're actually a *nix fanboy who feel that 
you're too elite poorly Windows users.