J5’s Blog

Well folks the time is finally here and the D-Bus library has come of age. Today it is my proud honor to announce to the world D-Bus 1.0.0 code named “Blue Bird”[1]. With this we now have an API/ABI Policy which will be strictly followed. Thank you all who have helped out through patches, bug reports and well wishes.

API/ABI Policy
===

Now that D-Bus has reached version 1.0, the objective is that all applications dynamically linked to libdbus will continue working indefinitely with the most recent system and session bus daemons.

– The protocol will never be broken again; any message bus should work with any client forever. However, extensions are possible where the protocol is extensible.

– If the library API is modified incompatibly, we will rename it as in http://ometer.com/parallel.html – in other words, it will always be possible to compile against and use the older API, and apps will always get the API they expect.

Interfaces can and probably will be _added_. This means both new functions and types in libdbus, and new methods exported to applications by the bus daemon.

The above policy is intended to make D-Bus as API-stable as other widely-used libraries (such as GTK+, Qt, Xlib, or your favorite example). If you have questions or concerns they are very welcome on the D-Bus mailing list.

CVS Head is now open for unstable 1.1.0 check ins while we will be branching appropriately for stable point releases. Note that the same procedures for checking in apply to all branches. Patches must be approved on the list or in bugzilla before they can be applied and committed.

As usual:

http://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus/dbus-1.0.0.tar.gz

[1] About the release name: Credit goes to Dan Williams, creator of Network Manager, for continuing the joke and naming the 1.0.0 release. The next time you see a Blue Bird bus drive by, tip your hat to the driver and thank Dan for perpetuating this line of corny humor