1 D-BUS is a simple IPC library based on messages.
3 See also the file HACKING for notes of interest to developers working on D-BUS.
5 See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/ for lots of documentation,
11 These are the dbus-specific configuration flags that can be given to
12 the ./configure program.
14 --enable-qt enable Qt-friendly client library
15 --enable-glib enable GLib-friendly client library
16 --enable-tests enable unit test code
17 --enable-ansi enable -ansi -pedantic gcc flags
18 --enable-verbose-mode support verbose debug mode
19 --enable-asserts include assertion checks
20 --enable-checks include sanity checks on public API
21 --enable-docs build documentation (requires Doxygen and jade)
22 --enable-gcov compile with coverage profiling instrumentation (gcc only)
24 --with-xml=libxml/expat XML library to use
25 --with-init-scripts=redhat Style of init scripts to install
26 --with-session-socket-dir=dirname Where to put sockets for the per-login-session message bus
27 --with-test-socket-dir=dirname Where to put sockets for make check
28 --with-system-pid-file=pidfile PID file for systemwide daemon
29 --with-system-socket=filename UNIX domain socket for systemwide daemon
35 D-BUS API/ABI and protocol necessarily remain in flux until we are
36 sure it will meet the various needs it's intended to meet. This means
37 we need to see some significant sample usage in the contexts of GNOME,
38 KDE, desktop applications, and systemwide uses such as print queue
39 monitoring, hotplug events, or whatever. We need the flexibility to
40 incorporate feedback from this sample usage.
42 Once we feel confident in the protocol and the API, we will release a
43 version 1.0. At that point, the intent is:
45 - The protocol will never be broken again; any message bus should
46 work with any client forever. However, extensions are possible
47 where the protocol is extensible.
49 - If the library API is modified incompatibly, we will rename it
50 as in http://ometer.com/parallel.html - in other words,
51 it will always be possible to compile against and use the older
52 API, and apps will always get the API they expect.
54 Until 1.0 is released, feedback that requires API changes may be
55 incorporated into D-BUS. This may break the API, the ABI, the
56 protocol, or all three.
58 To avoid a huge soname, the plan is to increment the soname only
59 between official stable releases, not with every development snapshot.
60 Versions numbered 0.x are considered development snapshots.
62 Until 1.0 is released, you have to define -DDBUS_API_SUBJECT_TO_CHANGE
63 just as a safety check to be sure everyone is aware of this API/ABI
64 policy and has the right expectations.
66 We do need people to test the APIs, so please do use the development
67 snapshots of D-BUS. They are intended to work and we do actively
70 However, if you're shipping a commercial binary-only application that
71 needs to keep running on M future versions of N operating systems, you
72 might want to include your own copy of D-BUS rather than relying on
73 the installed copy, for example.