Re: GLib plans for the next cycle

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 19:05 -0400, Ryan Lortie wrote:

> - Do we want glib depending on libdbus?
>    It is my understanding that the intention is that glib is at the
>    bottom of the stack.  I felt like the reason that the GIO/gvfs split
>    occured the way it did was in a large part because the gvfs client
>    would not be able to use libdbus if it was in glib.

This is not really a correct description. The vfs part of GIO is a way
to access whatever kind of filesystem you have availible on your
operating system/desktop. Whereas gvfs is an implementation of virtual
filesystem mounts specifically designed for modern unix desktops.

It doesn't really make sense to have gvfs in glib, as its not what would
be used on all platforms. For instance, its not used on win32, and its
not used when using glib on a non-desktop unix desktop (without a
session, dbus, etc).

One could of course put only the clients side of gvfs inside glib,
similar to the way we have the client side of some win32 http vfs stuff
in glib. However, this would mean we had to immediately freeze the
cross-process protocols and update them in lock-step which would be a
gigantic pain in the ass.