[arch-dev-public] Removing fam from [extra]
Hi, I would like to remove fam from [extra]. It is old, uses dnotify rather than the better inotify and does not build without lots of patches. It seems the patches we do use create Arch specific issues with log file filling (FS#14623). Finally, gamin does most of the job fam does but better and it is currently in the [community] repo. Any objections? Also, should I bring gamin to [extra] as a replacement or leave it in [community]? I really do not care which.... Allan
Hi,
I would like to remove fam from [extra]. It is old, uses dnotify rather than the better inotify and does not build without lots of patches. It seems the patches we do use create Arch specific issues with log file filling (FS#14623). Finally, gamin does most of the job fam does but better and it is currently in the [community] repo.
Any objections? Also, should I bring gamin to [extra] as a replacement or leave it in [community]? I really do not care which....
Allan
On Thursday 11 June 2009 08:22:45 am Allan McRae wrote: there are some extra packages that depend on fam/gamin, so it might be a good idea to bring gamin to extra.
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Allan McRae<allan@archlinux.org> wrote:
Hi,
I would like to remove fam from [extra]. It is old, uses dnotify rather than the better inotify and does not build without lots of patches. It seems the patches we do use create Arch specific issues with log file filling (FS#14623). Finally, gamin does most of the job fam does but better and it is currently in the [community] repo.
Any objections? Also, should I bring gamin to [extra] as a replacement or leave it in [community]? I really do not care which....
Allan
Every normal file manager should use inotify by itself and not depend on fam/gamin for that. What fam adds is the ability to monitor remote file systems IIRC, gamin does not add anything (of course it adds the basic functionality to file managers which don't have inotify support). so -1 from me Ronald
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 17:14, Ronald van Haren<pressh@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Allan McRae<allan@archlinux.org> wrote:
I would like to remove fam from [extra]. It is old, uses dnotify rather than the better inotify and does not build without lots of patches. It seems the patches we do use create Arch specific issues with log file filling (FS#14623). Finally, gamin does most of the job fam does but better and it is currently in the [community] repo.
Any objections? Also, should I bring gamin to [extra] as a replacement or leave it in [community]? I really do not care which....
Every normal file manager should use inotify by itself and not depend on fam/gamin for that. What fam adds is the ability to monitor remote file systems IIRC, gamin does not add anything (of course it adds the basic functionality to file managers which don't have inotify support).
so -1 from me
I agree with Ronald here, unless something has changed in gamin in these 3+ years during which there were numerous feature requests about replacing fam with gamin. And speaking of changes - this one (from http://www.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/news.html) looks suspicious: 0.1.9: Jul 27 2007 Bug fixes: enable polling when using inotify this fixes support for NFS partitions -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 20:52, Roman Kyrylych<roman.kyrylych@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 17:14, Ronald van Haren<pressh@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Allan McRae<allan@archlinux.org> wrote:
I would like to remove fam from [extra]. It is old, uses dnotify rather than the better inotify and does not build without lots of patches. It seems the patches we do use create Arch specific issues with log file filling (FS#14623). Finally, gamin does most of the job fam does but better and it is currently in the [community] repo.
Any objections? Also, should I bring gamin to [extra] as a replacement or leave it in [community]? I really do not care which....
Every normal file manager should use inotify by itself and not depend on fam/gamin for that. What fam adds is the ability to monitor remote file systems IIRC, gamin does not add anything (of course it adds the basic functionality to file managers which don't have inotify support).
so -1 from me
I agree with Ronald here, unless something has changed in gamin in these 3+ years during which there were numerous feature requests about replacing fam with gamin. And speaking of changes - this one (from http://www.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/news.html) looks suspicious: 0.1.9: Jul 27 2007 Bug fixes: enable polling when using inotify this fixes support for NFS partitions
Aha, here's a nice summary of the current fam/gamin status by JGC: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/14623#comment45188
I think this would be the right time to switch to gamin: - fam is dead upstream, gamin isn't - fam needs a lot of patches to build, gamin builds out of the box - fam uses (patched) dnotify, a shitty API that has been replaced by inotify, which is used by gamin - fam uses a daemon, gamin works from the library linked to the application - fam needs a daemon on the NFS server, gamin does polling (just like fam without dnotify support), this is actually a disadvantage of gamin, if the fam way would work correctly
Allan, you should've posted it from the start ;-) -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)
On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 16:14 +0200, Ronald van Haren wrote:
Every normal file manager should use inotify by itself and not depend on fam/gamin for that. What fam adds is the ability to monitor remote file systems IIRC, gamin does not add anything (of course it adds the basic functionality to file managers which don't have inotify support).
so -1 from me
inotify doesn't work over NFS/SMB, so that's where gamin comes in place. Note that GIO, the framework used by GNOME, doesn't support fam/gamin on archlinux, because I didn't want to create a dependency loop in case of gamin, and didn't want to pull fam into core either.
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 11:48 PM, Jan de Groot<jan@jgc.homeip.net> wrote:
On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 16:14 +0200, Ronald van Haren wrote:
Every normal file manager should use inotify by itself and not depend on fam/gamin for that. What fam adds is the ability to monitor remote file systems IIRC, gamin does not add anything (of course it adds the basic functionality to file managers which don't have inotify support).
so -1 from me
inotify doesn't work over NFS/SMB, so that's where gamin comes in place. Note that GIO, the framework used by GNOME, doesn't support fam/gamin on archlinux, because I didn't want to create a dependency loop in case of gamin, and didn't want to pull fam into core either.
gosh, I really missed some developments there. Now that gamin does support remote filesystems I'm fine with replacing fam by gamin. Ronald
Since the response was mixed and it seems that this was going to be more work than a simple removal, I just cleaned up the patching a bit and rebuilt for the time being. Allan
On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 14:47, Allan McRae<allan@archlinux.org> wrote:
Since the response was mixed and it seems that this was going to be more work than a simple removal, I just cleaned up the patching a bit and rebuilt for the time being.
Hm, I thought that response was positive after reading the current situation of fam/gamin. -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)
Roman Kyrylych wrote:
On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 14:47, Allan McRae<allan@archlinux.org> wrote:
Since the response was mixed and it seems that this was going to be more work than a simple removal, I just cleaned up the patching a bit and rebuilt for the time being.
Hm, I thought that response was positive after reading the current situation of fam/gamin.
Maybe. If someone moves gamin to [extra] and all the packages with deps on fam change to gamin, then I will remove it. The were more packages needing rebuilt than I thought and I do not enough time to deal with all the rebuilds and testing at the moment... Allan
participants (5)
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Allan McRae
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Eduardo Romero
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Jan de Groot
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Roman Kyrylych
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Ronald van Haren