Re: Moving to *Avahi* over howl

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

Hi, 

On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 20:07 -0700, Alex Graveley wrote:
> Does anyone have any sort of convincing argument as to why an API 
> abstraction in this case is *needed*?
> 

First off, I have not done any lower level development (ie technologies
such as howl, bonjour, avahi). With that said, I have a degree in system
design so take whatever I say with a nice grain of salt. Just adding my
two cents here...

>From a system design standpoint, anything we can do make an easy for
developers not have to deal with what protocol to use on the network is
a good thing. If abstraction will allow simultaneous daemons to run we
can work toward transitioning to different systems now and later. Again,
I have no idea what I am talking about on a technical level regarding
avahi/howl/bonjour, but it makes sense to spend time designing a good
API so we don't have to worry as much about whatever is coming after all
these are technologies are obsolete. Also, I have seen mention of how
this integrates with KDE. Again, anything we can do that can help in
this respect is also a good thing. Finally, I think that helping
developers use interesting technologies like this in their apps can only
bring about better and more interesting applications. I know I would
rather have a single API I can rely for a good deal of time instead of
having to rewrite code later when GNOME or KDE adopts a new system. 

Again, just my two cents. I hope this doesn't get in the way of the
discussion. 

Eric