Re: RFC: Adding zlib dependency to libgio

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Sun, 2009-11-08 at 21:24 +0100, nf2 wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> > I've been working on some API for gio (more details later) that involves
> > having an API for (de)compression. Having this as a public API makes
> > zlib a mandatory dependency for libgio (and thus the glib tarball).
> >
> > We already have a dependency on zlib from gdk-pixbuf, so all Gtk+ apps
> > already pull this in, however there could be non-gtk+ using glib apps
> > that now get an additional dependency. Its a very small (74K .so) and
> > very widely availible/used library though, so I don't think this is a
> > huge deal.
> >
> > Anyone who thinks this is a bad idea?
> >
> 
> Well - as I already said earlier, I think GIO - in the long run - has
> a potential of becomming *the* free desktop API for file-management.
> Simply because it's design is modern, universal and reminiscent of IO
> APIs, which people already know from other programming languages (i.e.
> Java). And it's sitting very low in the stack. Such an API is hard to
> design and takes long to consolidate.

I know you're really interested in cross-desktop VFS support, and I
don't disagree with having something like that. However, the fact is
that libGIO is an important part of the Gtk development stack, that
contains all the stuff that developers that want to write Gtk+ apps
want. Just like Qt contains all that Qt developers want/need. We will
never artificially limit our platform just because of cross-desktop
compatibility.

And additionally, I don't see GIO as the thing that should really be
shared between glib and Qt, but rather GVFS. I'd much rather see some
cooperation between the gvfs and Qt people to stabilize the gvfs
protocols such that Qt could directly talk to gvfs mounts.

Obviously some could could be shared, but a straight dependency on
libgio isn't necessary.