Monitor plugins Was: Xfce task manager prototype

[Florian Rivoal]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:03:59 +0200
Mike Massonnet <mmassonnet at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2010/4/26 Landry Breuil <landry.breuil at gmail.com>:
> > On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Mike Massonnet
> > <mmassonnet at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Something else has made noise more than once, the possibility to
> >> share code between the panel plugins. Currently we have a system
> >> monitor, a netload plugin, and a cpugraph (if I'm not mistaken.)
> >> Do you have a call on this?

> > Iirc frivoal talked about that once he'd had finished what he
> > planned for cpugraph. Currently systemload, netload and wavelan
> > plugins don't see any development as they are more or less feature
> > complete, but they each have their own os-dependent code. All that
> > should really be in a single panel plugin, or at least separate
> > plugins but sharing a common lib to access system values.

> @frivoal: If the new project should be created, I suggest it to be
> named after “monitor” f.e. xfce4-system-monitors-plugin.


Indeed, I am still thinking of a merger project. For CPU-graph, I am
pretty much done with what I wanted to do. I haven't made a new release
yet, as translations are not ready yet, and there are still a bit of
work on *BSD compatibility, but other than than, I am pretty much where
I wanted to be.

As for the merger project, I'd very much like to do this, but as I
can't work full-time on xfce, it is likely to take a while, and in any
case, won't be ready for xfce 4.8. While the various monitors are
indeed more or less "featyre complete", they are not bug-free, so, in
order to make 4.8 a solid release, I was thinking of doing bug-fixing on
them until 4.8 is out, and switch to the merger project after that.

Since I am now mostly done with cpu-graph, I'll switch to fixing
another of the monitors. Any opinion on which should take priority?


> > A common library for that would be nice, and libgtop is far from
> > working fine on !linux. Its code is not really understandable, and
> > the doc is nothing more than the autogenerated one.
> > Isn't it possible to merge all those in a single package, with a
> > common lib/api for xfce4-taskmanager and the
> > 'put-all-monitors-together'-panel-plugin ?

> I really don't want to see any kind of shared library and very likely
> recommend the use of a static library. So that is a no for sharing
> code between this possible new project and the existing task manager;
> unless someone knows a solution to use a static library cross git
> components. Maybe the git-sub-modules-what-not can be used to build
> stuff from the static lib in the task manager... We will have to see!

Part of the merger project would likely result in either fixing
libgtop, or more likely in writing an alternative, based on bits of the
current monitor plugins. As I haven't started, I don't have (yet) a
strong opinion on how it should be done, but what do you have against a
shared library? It seems to me that especially if it is going to be
used in several projects (monitors, task manager), a shared library
would make a lot of sense. And if libgtop is as broken as Landry said,
projects beyond xfce might find it handy.

 - Florian