Re: GDBus support on Win32 + other platforms (Was Re: GtkApplication and argc/arv)

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristanvb openismus com>]

On Mon, 2011-03-07 at 16:48 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 4:40 AM, Tristan Van Berkom
> <tristanvb openismus com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > As I mentioned before, I'm not asking for an implementation on win32
> > of GtkApplication, I'm just asking for it to succeed, run a mainloop
> > and "do something" as a fallback for a missing implementation.
> 
> So, you are not asking for an implementation, you just want it to work
> ? :-) Thats kinda funny...

Sure it sounds funny. however it's all together reasonable.

All that needs to be done for a backend using object
like GApplication is something like this:

int
g_application_run (...)
{
   backend = create_backend ();

   if (backend)
      return backend->run()

   /* Fallback to no IPC, take care not to cause
    * the calling application to explode
    */   

   /* make sure we call the GApplication vfuncs properly,
    * Call the initializer first 
    */
   this.init_or_activate_or_whatever_it_is();

   /* If it handles the command line, give it the arguments */
   this.local_command_line ()

   /* run GTK+ */
   gtk_main();
}

How simple is that ?

I'm not asking for exporting actions on some kind of bus api,
if the backend is missing, obviously you cant get activated
for any reason by any bus.

Not asking for built-in application uniqueness either.

Just run the main loop... everything that is unsupported
will just "not happen", it would at least be *safe* to
use the GApplication.

>From where I stand, you just "can't" use GApplication at
all for a cross-platform app... I did not read that anywhere
in the docs, and running a GApplication on win32 will actually
cause the application to "not start up".

How is this an unreasonable expectation of glib ?

How can you call it stable if it fails on various
supported platforms ?

Regards,
       -Tristan

> 
> >> It shares that fate with many other features, like file monitoring,
> >> content types, etc. where  native implementations on other platforms
> >> are sadly missing.
> >
> > Do we really have other instances like this ?
> 
> Here is some analysis of portability concerns for the GNOME stack, not
> just GTK+. Might be instructive:
> 
> https://live.gnome.org/PortabilityMatrix