KDE Brooklyn Chat Bridge Declared Production-Ready

[starshipeleven]

You know what? Here is another one.
to make things simpler things should be simple. Ergo before something have reached the first version it has to be a version in progress right? When you have the first version you do revisions to that with the intent to improve that version. Therefore you increase the revision number. If you change things enough that the darn thing is very different to the first version you bump the version number.

No. The version should be bumped on ANY change (and usually is) as it is supposed to show that the software is now different as it was modified somehow.

Really that's all there is to it. Do a change, bump the version number somehow.

[bug77]

fixed.

Java is strong on the server side.
It's pretty good on the desktop, too. Java9 brings support for AoT compile, so it turns it completely into native code if JiT isn't your cup of tea. Of course, Oracle being Oracle, in the end they decided to do a 180 and declared AoT not production quality yet, so I'm not sure how it will pan out.

[zanny]

I wonder what the value proposition over Telepathy is.

I maintain the KTP packages on the AUR.

The answer is that Telepathy is trainwreck failure that blows chunks. The number of library dependencies you pull in to make it work, the number of unrelated conf file formats and syntax needed to implement handlers, the mountain of abstractions they build to try to make chat just dbus pipes of messages while also providing library support in most GUI languages and as an active server means the whole thing is an unmaintainable mess of lovely GObject C code.

It had very noble ambitions. The original design circa ~2005 was to improve on the libpurple model by making chat integration in any software seamless - if you are a major client, you used the API libs, if you just wanted to support sending files to IM contacts you could just chuck your file on dbus. The problem is a complex system like that needs a lot of continuing maintenance to keep it from decaying, and Maemo / Nokia were originally stewarding it. That fell apart in a few years, Gnome took over, they abandoned parts of it (mainly the signond part), Canonical took over for Ubuntu Phone (look how that turned out), and now it is this disjoint mess of rotting dependencies and actively maintained code.

It should go down in a history as a testament to great intentions and the consequences of thinking too big - Telepathy wanted to support all of gtk and qt natively, and thus had two backends to everything, and had to abstract all the differences not just in the protocols it was supporting but the handlers that were consuming them. That kind of bidirectional abstraction quickly lands you in a place where nobody knows how anything works and any change breaks everything.

There hasn't really been a replacement to it, though. libpurple3 has been MIA for years, and honestly, do we really want an updated C based messaging library?

All that being said, Brooklyn has nothing to do with Telepathy or chat. Its a chat bridge for servers to bond different protocols a la what Matrix does for Gitter and IRC.

[boxie]

versioning nazi detected.

Really, it's just a number. There is no rule that states that version 1.0 means the software is stable.

nah mate - 1.0 is "ready for user testing" versions 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 fix the shit that they found - v2.0 is "oh, we made some stupid design descions", 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 are again "fixing shit that users found" :P

[torsionbar28]

nah mate - 1.0 is "ready for user testing" versions 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 fix the shit that they found - v2.0 is "oh, we made some stupid design descions", 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 are again "fixing shit that users found" :P

... unless it's a web browser, in which case version 57 follows version 2.3.

[starshipeleven]

nah mate - 1.0 is "ready for user testing" versions 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 fix the shit that they found - v2.0 is "oh, we made some stupid design descions", 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 are again "fixing shit that users found" :P

I like this world you are living in.

[bug77]

I maintain the KTP packages on the AUR.

The answer is that Telepathy is trainwreck failure that blows chunks. The number of library dependencies you pull in to make it work, the number of unrelated conf file formats and syntax needed to implement handlers, the mountain of abstractions they build to try to make chat just dbus pipes of messages while also providing library support in most GUI languages and as an active server means the whole thing is an unmaintainable mess of lovely GObject C code.

It had very noble ambitions. The original design circa ~2005 was to improve on the libpurple model by making chat integration in any software seamless - if you are a major client, you used the API libs, if you just wanted to support sending files to IM contacts you could just chuck your file on dbus. The problem is a complex system like that needs a lot of continuing maintenance to keep it from decaying, and Maemo / Nokia were originally stewarding it. That fell apart in a few years, Gnome took over, they abandoned parts of it (mainly the signond part), Canonical took over for Ubuntu Phone (look how that turned out), and now it is this disjoint mess of rotting dependencies and actively maintained code.

It should go down in a history as a testament to great intentions and the consequences of thinking too big - Telepathy wanted to support all of gtk and qt natively, and thus had two backends to everything, and had to abstract all the differences not just in the protocols it was supporting but the handlers that were consuming them. That kind of bidirectional abstraction quickly lands you in a place where nobody knows how anything works and any change breaks everything.

There hasn't really been a replacement to it, though. libpurple3 has been MIA for years, and honestly, do we really want an updated C based messaging library?

All that being said, Brooklyn has nothing to do with Telepathy or chat. Its a chat bridge for servers to bond different protocols a la what Matrix does for Gitter and IRC.

But other than that, Telepathy is fine, right? /s

[DavideRiva]

Im also stumbling over the Java part.
KDE neon doesn't even have a Java runtime installed by default. I just installed Eclipse the other day and noticed that i had to install the JDK.

Sounds weird.

Hi. I'm the author of Brooklyn. It is *not* a desktop application nor something that you've to install in a workstation.
It's a server app.

[CrystalGamma]

The answer is that Telepathy is trainwreck failure that blows chunks. […]

All that being said, Brooklyn has nothing to do with Telepathy or chat. Its a chat bridge for servers to bond different protocols a la what Matrix does for Gitter and IRC.

I know that Telepathy doesn't work, I meant I am very wary of projects that promise this kind of thing, because they could just as well end up an equal trainwreck.

If this, however, is rather a server-side federation tool, my question becomes: what does this have to do with KDE? I mean it's based on Java and so probably doesn't use Qt, it's not a user-visible application … so the only thing I can see connecting this to KDE is the KDE community using it on their infrastructure …

[Serafean]

Huh, what are you talking about? If you're referring to Telegram, the Linux client is qt based, GPLv3 and is published on github. I just upgraded Telegram and the version matches what is on github. As far as the server being closed source I guess you can use Hangouts, Allo, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Duo, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and the list goes on - but those are closed source also - and I have no idea what you mean by "Federation". My point was that it's kinda senseless to use Telepathy or Brooklyn for Telegram, especially in KDE. The Telegram desktop client for Linux is qt based, open source and kept current. How many commercial messengers do you know that take the time to create, maintain and keep current a Linux Desktop Client? Let alone one that is GPLv3 and the source is kept current and maintained on github.

The client source issue was only the few first releases. My bad.
For open source server, there is XMPP (ie jabber) and e-mail.
Federation is that I run my own server, and can communicate with other members of the network who are on different servers. Both XMPP and e-mail allow me to do just that.
When a public "API" is a "feature"of a communications service, I tend to get wary. An API is the bare minimum that should be provided, usually the official clients are crap, and don't integrate well within other systems. (haven't tried telegram, making assumptions from skype, slack and ICQ)


DavideRiva so how does Brooklyn compare to XMPP gateways?
(Yes, I'm an XMPP fan )