Re: gnome-socket API proposal

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel gnu org>]

> Well yeah, but the overhead is only for a small set of applications. If
> you add it to libgnomeui, you make libgnomeui bigger and that impacts
> _all_ applications. 

Not really.  What does it mean the library is bigger?  It means:

    1. A few more symbols are included in the library for linking
       purposes.

    2. It means that probably one extra page of coded is added.

Under a typical setup, this extra page does not even play a role.
until you touch the code on that page, the page is not even loaded
from the hard drive.

> That may not seem like much if it's just this sockets
> stuff, but we have to draw a line or we end up with all kinds of bloat in
> gnome-libs. Do you want to replace libgnomeui with a giant
> Bonobo-print-XML-glade library? 

If I could get a way of linking those shared libraries, i would love
to create a gigantic library that reflects the *best* setup.

In SystemV they have libraries for everything.  -lnsl, -lsocket.  In
Linux we dump them all in libc.  Do they have an impact?  No, they do
not have an impact.

> What are the criteria we are going to use
> to ensure libgnomeui doesn't get any more bloated?

Again, what is "bloat"?  

> I think the sensible criterion for inclusion in libgnome/libgnomeui is
> "almost all apps would potentially benefit from this code." This network
> code will only be used by maybe 10% of apps. gnome-dns is used less than
> that even. That's why I was proposing that we remove it, along with lots
> of other stuff (see libgnomeui/TODO).

but the networking stuff looks very very good.  It sounds like even an
obvious thing to have in glib.

Miguel.