dbus/doc/TODO

Important for 1.0
===

 - change .service files to have Names=list rather than Name=string
  
 - How we will handle DCOP needs sorting out. Among other things, we
   need to check that service and service-ownership semantics map to DCOP 
   reasonably well.

 - Activation needs some careful additional thinking-through.

 - Audit @todo and FIXME for security issues

 - The convenience functions in dbus-bus.h should perhaps have
   the signatures that they would have if they were autogenerated
   stubs. e.g. the acquire service function. We should also evaluate 
   which of these functions to include, in light of the fact that 
   GLib/Qt native stubs will probably also exist.

 - the "break loader" and valid/invalid message tests are all disabled;
   they need to be fixed and re-enabled with the new message args stuff.
   I think I want to drop the .message files thing and just have code
   that generates messages, more like the tests for
   dbus-marshal-recursive.c

 - modify the auth protocol to also support other initial-handshake
   type of information:

   Perhaps the auth protocol should be able to negotiate a protocol 
   version to the least-common-denominator between client and server?
   Though in practice ever using this feature would be pretty tough, 
   since protocol probably modifies the API. But we could have it there
   as a safety net.

 - need to define bus behavior if you send a message to 
   yourself; is it an error, or allowed? If allowed, 
   we need to have a test for it in the test suite.

 - add string array support back to append_args()

 - validate dict entry number of fields

 - just before 1.0, try a HAVE_INT64=0 build and be sure it runs

 - the spec and implementation should probably require dict keys
   to be basic types

Important for 1.0 GLib Bindings
===

 - finish dbus-glib-tool support for adding introspection 
   data to GObject and autoexporting GObject using same

 - the GLib bindings varargs take DBUS_TYPE_WHATEVER and 
   return stuff allocated with dbus_malloc(); should this 
   be made more "G" at some expense in code duplication?
   You also still have to use some D-BUS functions such as 
   dbus_message_get_args() which takes a DBusError. 
   Probably we need to either fully encapsulate and hide 
   dbus/dbus.h, or encapsulate it slightly less e.g. no 
   GError. Or maybe it's as simple as "never return dbus_malloc() 
   memory" and just fully encapsulate the get_args() type of 
   stuff.

 - dbus_gproxy_connect_signal() has to take a signature for the signal 
   so it can figure out how to invoke the callback, or we have to rely
   on having introspection data.

 - DBusGProxy doesn't emit "destroy" when it should

Might as Well for 1.0
===

 - add dbus_message_has_path(), maybe has_member/interface

 - connection_open/connection_disconnect lacks symmetry, open/close
   or connect/disconnect

 - protocol version in each message is pretty silly

Can Be Post 1.0
===

 - The message bus internal code still says "service" for 
   "name", "base service" for "unique name", "activate" for 
   "start"; would be nice to clean up.

 - Property list feature on message bus (list of properties associated 
   with a connection). May also include message matching rules 
   that involve the properties of the source or destination
   connection.

 - Disconnecting the remote end on invalid UTF-8 is probably not a good 
   idea. The definition of "valid" is slightly fuzzy. I think it might 
   be better to just silently "fix" the UTF-8, or perhaps return an error.

   Owen says we should only validate the UTF-8 on dbus_message_get_string()
   (changing get_string to have an error return, and allowing a type error 
   as a possible return)

 - assorted _-prefixed symbols in libdbus aren't actually used by
   libdbus, only by the message bus. These bloat up the library
   size. Not sure how to fix, really.

 - build and install the Doxygen manual in Makefile when --enable-docs

 - if you send the same message to multiple connections, the serial number 
   will only be right for one of them. Probably need to just write() the serial 
   number, rather than putting it in the DBusMessage, or something.

 - perhaps the bus driver should have properties that reflect attributes
   of the session, such as hostname, architecture, operating system, 
   etc. Could be useful for code that wants to special-case behavior 
   for a particular host or class of hosts, for example.

 - currently the security policy stuff for messages to/from 
   the bus driver is kind of strange; basically it's hardcoded that 
   you can always talk to the driver, but the default config file 
   has rules for it anyway, or something. it's conceptually 
   screwy at the moment.

 - when making a method call, if the call serial were globally unique,
   we could forward the call serial along with any method calls made
   as a result of the first method call, and allow reentrancy that was
   strictly part of the call stack of said method call. But I don't
   really see how to do this without making the user pass around the
   call serial to all method calls all the time, or disallowing 
   async calls.

   If done post 1.0 will probably be an optional/ugly-API type 
   of thing.

 - I don't want to introduce DBusObject, but refcounting and object
   data could still be factored out into an internal "base class" 
   perhaps.

 - document the auth protocol as a set of states and transitions, and
   then reimplement it in those terms

 - recursive dispatch, see dbus_connection_dispatch()

 - do we need per-display activation; if so I'd like to do this by setting a
   "display ID" property on screen 0, with a GUID, and keying activation by 
   said GUID. Otherwise you get all kinds of unrobust
   string/hostname-based mess. per-screen is then done by appending screen number
   to the display. If displays have a deterministic ID like this, you can 
   do per-display by simply including GUID in the service name.

 - optimization and profiling!