Re: [announce] Supervision: another Java GUI for Subversion

Harald Wellmann wrote:

> Daniel Rall schrieb:
>
>>
>> It would be a lot more useful to the Subversion project you pitched in
>> on the JNI/SWIG bindings. They're not going to be any less portable
>> than wrapping the commandline client, as you're essentially calling
>> the same code.
>
>
> I agree JNI bindings would be useful. I'm just more interested in a
> usable GUI currently, and JNI or CLI is just a means to that end. I've
> stated my reasons for not using JNI on the Supervision project page.

Here's what you say:

    * You cannot simply run your Java application on another platform;
      you have to recompile the native library first.

You cannot simply run your Superversion GUI on another platfrom, you
have to recompile the command-line client first.

Score: 1:1

    * JNI programming (and debugging) is rather hairy.

But of course, you don't have to *do* any JNI programming, because we
use SWIG to generate the JNI wrappers. And of course, it's not exactly
easy to debug into a CLI from a Java GUI, either.

Score: 1:2

    * The Subversion Client API seems to be less stable than the
      Subverson CLI; thus, a GUI built on top of JNI runs the risk of
      not being usable with the latest subversion release.

I don't see where you got that from. Both the client API and the CLI
will change in various ways before 1.0, so you have to track the
changes in any case. The difference is that when the CLI changes, *you*
have to figure out how to fix your parser; but when the client API
changes, SWIG just generates new bindings and the compiler tells you
what to change.

Score: 1.5:3

And finally, using the native API lets you do nice things (such as
cancellation and progress reporting) that the CLI simply cannot.

Score: 1.5:4. You lose. :-)

-- 
Brane Čibej   <brane_at_xbc.nu>   http://www.xbc.nu/brane/
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