Common VFS: GKIO experiment

[nf <nf2 scheinwelt at>]

Hi lists! (xdg, gnome-vfs, kde-core)

I think everyone agrees, that there should be a single VFS-library for
ALL (or at least MOST) applications running on a desktop. Because KDE
and GNOME developed two sophisticated, but incompatible VFS libraries,
there seems to be a kind of deadlock situation now. Sadly, the Linux
desktop appears to be totally broken when mixing applications from
different frameworks (although this is inevitable for the average user).
AFAIK there is no solution for this problem yet. 

In order to find a way out of this situation, i would like to start an
experiment: To write a (KDE/C++) wrapper to Gnome-VFS which looks and
acts like the KIO-API - "GKIO". Then write a number of test-cases, which
test the GKIO-API for KIO requirements and compatibility. Once this
tests work, i want to try plugging GKIO into kde-core libs (instead of
original KIO code).

To start, i wrote a "Common-Main-Loop" patch for Qt, which is required
for using glib-based libraries from KDE:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xdg/2004-November/005456.html
http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xdg/2004-December/005499.html

Because i am new to KIO and Gnome-VFS, i would really welcome some hints
from the experts on the conceptual and technical differences of both
libraries, which might be obstacles to this experiment. I need your help
here!!!

I don't want any "political" discussion like "KDE-developers will never
accept that", because that leads nowhere. I don't care if my wrapper
will ever be used in "real world". It's just an experiment to push
things forward. If it inspires people to look for better solutions, that
would be cool.

If you want to help me with developing GKIO, please let me know (My time
to work on this is limited).

Thanks in advance! :-)

Norbert