[rox-devel] D-BUS replacement

[Thomas L. <ta...@ec...>]

D-BUS is causing lots of problems with the constantly-changing API. And
now, Debian/unstable no longer contains Python bindings for the default
Python!

I've been thinking about replacing it with a system like the one used in
ROX-Filer (SOAP-over-X). I spent a few minutes looking at it, and it
should be pretty trivial to support this in ROX-Lib using XML-RPC-over-X
(XML-RPC is easier because a) Python includes support built-in and b) SOAP
has become rather bloated over the years).

Using X instead of a separate message bus process saves us a daemon, and
using X rather than sockets avoids some security problems. It also means
that programs running on different machines can communicate. It will be a
little slower than D-BUS, but for our use (logging out and setting
configuration values) it won't any difference.

The ROX-Filer mechanism has worked very well, and we've been able to add
new methods and new arguments over the years without breaking backwards
compatibility.

If we make the API similar to D-BUS (with namespaced services and objects)
then we should be able to switch to D-BUS later if it ever stabilises.

Thoughts?


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		http://rox.sourceforge.net
GPG: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6  8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1