Re: [LAD] [Jack-Devel] jackd/jackdbus : D-Bus or not D-Bus...

Hi All, After hours of discussion on #jack IRC, it seems that we are in a completely blocked situation: 1) we currently have 2 "incarnations" of the jack server named "jackd" and "jackdbus". "jackd" is the legacy "classic" version of the server that interact with the ~/jackdrc setting file. This setting file may be written by Qjackctl or Ardour. "jackdbus" is the new D-Bus aware version of the server, it use a completely new setting management system using a "conf.xml" file. Il may use a multi-setting system in the future. 2) the *heart" of the problem Fons initially told about is in the way applications "auto-start" the server. This launching strategy is part of libjack and depends of the incarnation of the server (jackd of jackdbus) that is supposed to be used. Right now this strategy is chosen at *compile time*, so that in "classic" mode the "jackd" server will be launched using a fork-exec strategy, or in D-Bus mode the "jackdbus" server will be launched by issuing a D-Bus call. 3) Since the "auto-start" strategy is chosen at compile time and thus is coded in libjack, users will typically encounter all sort of problems as soon as the used applications interact with a "D-Bus based strategy" libjack (that will launch "jackdbus" incarnation) and users still use Qjackctl that interact with the "jackd" incarnation. 4) Different ideas have been proposed to merge the 2 "jackd" and "jackdbus" incarnations in a unique extended "jackd" exe, but nothing really clear emerged. 4) A possible proposed solution was to define 2 completely separated packages for jack2 : the "classic" one would package the "jackd" incarnation and allow Qjackctl and legacy control applications to be used with it. The "D-Bus" one would package the "jackdbus" incarnation, and provide D-Bus bas control applications (patchage, ladi tools....). The problem of this strategy is that..., it is a kind of complete failure regarding the way jack is supposed to be distributed. It may even get worse if a new "jackosc" incarnation (a one that would allow to control the server using OSC) appears a some point in the future... 5) Another idea would be improve the "choice of auto-start strategy" by providing a runtime choice for that: a way for the user to select between the "classic", "D-Bus", "OSC", strategy once globally for a given working session... 5) Another idea would be be to completely drops the "auto-start" strategy...This way we don't have multiple strategy anymore, and solve most of the problems... but loose a feature. Comments?