Re: AW: D-BUS versus GDOMAP (Was: D-BUS equivalent)

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 31 Aug 2004, at 11:08, MJ Ray wrote:

> On 2004-08-30 17:24:44 +0100 Chris B. Vetter <cbv@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > MJ Ray wrote:
> > > Anyone know where gdomap's design docs are?
> > Use the source, Luke.
>
> That's not very helpful. It ranks alongside "STFW" and "RTFM".

I think that's a little unfair ... as the design/rationale is 
documented near the front of gdomap.h
His email may have been very terse, but it *was* accurate, as there is 
no discussion of internals/design
anywhere else... it's a very simple, lightweight system.  It's purpose 
is solely to map service names to ports
on a network-wide basis.

> Anyway, been looking around. "man 8 gdomap" has an introduction: it 
> also references GNUstep(7), which I don't seem to have. Where should 
> that have come from?

I don't know about that ... perhaps the author of the documentation

> The source is under gnustep/gnustep/core/base/Tools in CVS (not in 
> Source as I first thought). gdomap.c has few comments. Running 
> "autogsdoc gdomap.h" is not very helpful either.

I'm afraid gdomap predates autogsdoc by a long time.

>  There are some notes in a comment at the start of gdomap.h -- I 
> suggest reading "HOW IT WORKS" before the top bit.
>
> Is there an example of a GDO conversation somewhere?

Not that | know of ... I'm not sure what you would want in an 'example' 
anyway.  It all rather depends on the viewpoint you are approaching 
with.  The distributed objects mechanism is described reasonably in the 
NeXT documentation and also in the class documentation, though an 
overview really has to be inferred from the class documentation.

Anyway, the basic operation is  as follows:

Pre-conversation -
0a. Server registers an object as being available as the 'root object' 
on a particular port with a specific name.
0b. Client looks up a port by name.

Conversation -
1a. Client connects to the port and asks for the root object.
1b. Server returns proxy to root object
2a. Client then proceeds to send messages to the object
2b. Server sends message responses except where methods are declared 
'oneway'
3. The server may also send messages to the client and have the client 
send responses.
4. Eventually, the client or the server disconnects by invalidating 
port or connection or just exiting.

Post-conversation -
On shutdown, the server unregisters the service name and port it used.