4 ms·

You are probably not aware of the GObject Introspection mechanism that is available for quite some time now. Any compliant GObject-based library can be used by

You are probably not aware of the GObject Introspection mechanism that is available for quite some time now. Any compliant GObject-based library can be used by any language that supports GI through an intermediate representation of the classes, interfaces etc. So, you don't need to write any bindings, neither for Python, JS, Java, Go or whatever.

buster 14y ago
Question is if there is a GObject based library for everything a developer likes to do?
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Give me a list of everything that a developer likes to do, and I'll try to answer this.
  - buster 14y ago
    Ok, let me put it this way: What do you estimate is bigger? The amount of plain C libraries or the amount of GObject based libraries? Where would you put the amount of available perl/python/ruby modules? (The amount of C libraries not in GObject is my answer to your question ;) )
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      Your question confuses me. What exactly do you believe GObject does?
      - buster 14y ago
        Out of my head and with no experience in it i'd think it's a library/framework to give plain C libraries more object oriented features, a type system and overall the base for most or all Gnome libraries. Probably comparable to Qt in that it probably has its own String implementation or container implementations. Much like Qt but procedural. Is that far off?
        phaylon 14y ago
        It does that, but that's not the important point. The fun part comes with the GIR files, that abstractly describe the classes, functions, members, constants and what have you in XML. Which means your language bindings are inflated from that description. That minimizes the effort to build and manage bindings for libraries developed on top of GObject.
        buster 14y ago
        Well, i don't question that flexibility, i have high regards of Gnome and run it for years now. I am not developer of Gnome, so i actually couldn't care less, apart from concerns of how the development of gnome turns out in a few years. Will JS in Gnome take off? Will there be more or less new developers? What i question is the quality of documentation and the amount of 3rd party libraries (partly based on what i have seen from vala and in comparison to the whole C/C++ ecosystem and the amount and quality of 3rd party libraries for python, which i surely know more of then of GJS and GObject). No doubt it will be a massive amount of work to sort of replicate the efforts already put into the existing projects. Does the Gnome development have those resources? It will have to rely on other developers to join and work on that, for sure. It's sort of a chicken/egg problem. Why would i choose to write my Gnome app in Javascript when i have many well tested and well documented alternatives? In the end, most interesting would be the point of view and experience of a vala contributor or even a Mono developer. I don't doubt that glib, gobject and everything starting with G is nice ;) But, again, how does it compare to the superset that is the C eco system or to a "direct competitor" that is python/ruby/perl/mono/whatever, _especially_ when it comes to desktop apps. Just take a look at how much is written for the Linux desktop in perl/python/mono/ruby and how good it actually works. What is wrong with C/C++/python/ruby/mono/perl that it REALLY REALLY REALLY is beneficial to go down another road? P.S.: Yes, i get that it is still (and will always be) possible to write apps in those languages. It's most important what the primary and recommended way is, though.
        phaylon 14y ago
        I can't really comment on that, I'm in the Perl 5 category myself :) My first assumption is they're trying to get some of the JavaScript crowd to do Gnome application development by connecting the communities. In this case, by actively working on the bindings.
- stephen_g 14y ago
  Why would this matter at all? Using one GObject library doesn't then mean you can only use GObject libraries... If you're using GI to access GObject libraries like Gtk+, you can still use any library your language supports for anything you want to do.

buster 14y ago

Question is if there is a GObject based library for everything a developer likes to do?

chris_wot 14y ago
Give me a list of everything that a developer likes to do, and I'll try to answer this.
- buster 14y ago
  Ok, let me put it this way: What do you estimate is bigger? The amount of plain C libraries or the amount of GObject based libraries? Where would you put the amount of available perl/python/ruby modules? (The amount of C libraries not in GObject is my answer to your question ;) )
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    Your question confuses me. What exactly do you believe GObject does?
    - buster 14y ago
      Out of my head and with no experience in it i'd think it's a library/framework to give plain C libraries more object oriented features, a type system and overall the base for most or all Gnome libraries. Probably comparable to Qt in that it probably has its own String implementation or container implementations. Much like Qt but procedural. Is that far off?
      - phaylon 14y ago
        It does that, but that's not the important point. The fun part comes with the GIR files, that abstractly describe the classes, functions, members, constants and what have you in XML. Which means your language bindings are inflated from that description. That minimizes the effort to build and manage bindings for libraries developed on top of GObject.
        buster 14y ago
        Well, i don't question that flexibility, i have high regards of Gnome and run it for years now. I am not developer of Gnome, so i actually couldn't care less, apart from concerns of how the development of gnome turns out in a few years. Will JS in Gnome take off? Will there be more or less new developers? What i question is the quality of documentation and the amount of 3rd party libraries (partly based on what i have seen from vala and in comparison to the whole C/C++ ecosystem and the amount and quality of 3rd party libraries for python, which i surely know more of then of GJS and GObject). No doubt it will be a massive amount of work to sort of replicate the efforts already put into the existing projects. Does the Gnome development have those resources? It will have to rely on other developers to join and work on that, for sure. It's sort of a chicken/egg problem. Why would i choose to write my Gnome app in Javascript when i have many well tested and well documented alternatives? In the end, most interesting would be the point of view and experience of a vala contributor or even a Mono developer. I don't doubt that glib, gobject and everything starting with G is nice ;) But, again, how does it compare to the superset that is the C eco system or to a "direct competitor" that is python/ruby/perl/mono/whatever, _especially_ when it comes to desktop apps. Just take a look at how much is written for the Linux desktop in perl/python/mono/ruby and how good it actually works. What is wrong with C/C++/python/ruby/mono/perl that it REALLY REALLY REALLY is beneficial to go down another road? P.S.: Yes, i get that it is still (and will always be) possible to write apps in those languages. It's most important what the primary and recommended way is, though.
        phaylon 14y ago
        I can't really comment on that, I'm in the Perl 5 category myself :) My first assumption is they're trying to get some of the JavaScript crowd to do Gnome application development by connecting the communities. In this case, by actively working on the bindings.
stephen_g 14y ago
Why would this matter at all? Using one GObject library doesn't then mean you can only use GObject libraries... If you're using GI to access GObject libraries like Gtk+, you can still use any library your language supports for anything you want to do.