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authorStephan Bergmann <sbergman@redhat.com>2012-04-03 12:59:26 +0100
committerMichael Meeks <michael.meeks@suse.com>2012-04-03 13:00:01 +0100
commit96823006127dbae9dad2833b40c7f9cc7d467ce9 (patch)
tree478c5541b9bca59b4d34d966bf93a0eef502dd91 /stoc
parent248edba9de6c25a37f014316a89e38e788a1ac09 (diff)
stoc: add helpful structural documentation from mailing list post.
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Registries, reflection, introspection implementation for UNO.
+
+
+The UNO types and services bootstrapping code is very old, and concepts
+are tightly knit together. Whenever you want to change something you risk
+backwards incompatibility. The code causes mental pain, and whenever
+you need to touch it you want to run away screaming. One typically ends
+up doing minimally invasive changes. That way, you have a chance of
+surviving the process. But you also pile up guilt.
+
+At the heart of the matter there is the old binary "store" file structure
+and the XRegistry interface on top of it. At runtime, both all the UNO
+type information (scattered across a number of binary rdb files) and
+all the UNO service information (scattered across a number of rdb files
+that used to be binary but have been mostly changed to XML now) are
+represented by a single XRegistry instance each.
+
+The way the respective information is represented in the XRegistry
+interface simply corresponds to the way the information is stored in the
+binary rdb files. Those files are designed for storage of hierarchically
+nested small blobs of information. Hence, for example information about
+a UNO interface type com.sun.star.foo.XBar is stored in a nested "folder"
+with path com - sun - star - foo - XBar, containing little blobs of
+information about the type's ancestors, its methods, etc. Similarly
+for information about instantiable services like com.sun.star.baz.Boz.
+
+As there are typically multiple rdb files containing types resp.
+services (URE specific, LO specific, from extensions, ...), but they need
+to be represented by a single XRegistry instance, so "nested registries"
+were invented. They effectively form a linear list of chaining XRegistry
+instances together. Whenever a path needs to be looked up in the top-level
+registry, it effectively searches through the linear list of nested
+registries. All with the cumbersome UNO XRegistry interface between
+the individual parts. Horror.
+
+When the XML service rdbs were introduced, we chickened out (see above
+for rationale) and put them behind an XRegistry facade, so that they
+would seamlessly integrate with the existing mess. We postponed
+systematic clean-up to the pie-in-the-sky days of LO 4 (or, "once we'll
+become incompatible with OOo," as the phrase used to be back then)