dbus version required

dbus version required

[Mathias Dahl]

I am trying to include dbus in my build. I added --with-dbus but it
said it would not include it. I investigated a bit and found out that
the version required is not on my system. I am using "Mandriva Linux
release 2007.0 (Official) for i586", which is not super new but I
don't think it is very old either, and the dbus version is 0.92. My
question is: is dbus version 1.0 or higher required for what Emacs
uses it for? If not, could we "lower the barier"? If yes, well, then I
have to look into how I can upgrade, because the dbus integration
seems very useful.

/Mathias

Re: dbus version required

[Michael Albinus]

"Mathias Dahl" <mathias.dahl@gmail.com> writes:

> I am trying to include dbus in my build. I added --with-dbus but it
> said it would not include it. I investigated a bit and found out that
> the version required is not on my system. I am using "Mandriva Linux
> release 2007.0 (Official) for i586", which is not super new but I
> don't think it is very old either, and the dbus version is 0.92. My
> question is: is dbus version 1.0 or higher required for what Emacs
> uses it for? If not, could we "lower the barier"? If yes, well, then I
> have to look into how I can upgrade, because the dbus integration
> seems very useful.

Some months ago, I've tried it on an Ubuntu 6.06 (LTS) machine. I
don't remember the D-Bus version, but it was definitely < 1.0.

The D-Bus interface, at least as used in dbusbind.c, was compatible,
and I was able to use this D-Bus version inside Emacs. But I haven't
tested it heavily.

In order to let Emacs build towards such a pre-released D-Bus version,
you shall patch the D-Bus version check in configure.in in order to to
accept a version smaller than 1.0. Additionally, IIRC, you need to add
"-DDBUS_API_SUBJECT_TO_CHANGE" to the compiler options; otherwise you
cannot compile dbusbind.c. This is a check in <dbus/dbus.h> for all
D-Bus versions prior to 1.0, in order to be aware of the possible
interface instability.

And this is also the reason I don't believe we shall support D-Bus
versions < 1.0 officially. The recipe above is just to check whether
D-Bus is useful in your case. In the longer run, you shall upgrade to
D-Bus 1.x.

> /Mathias

Best regards, Michael.