A little over a year after releasing D-Bus 1.0.0 I am proud to announce the beginning of a new series of stable releases. This is effectively the 1.2.x stable series though the version does not reflect that yet due to non-technical reasons discussed in the release notes bellow. This replaces the 1.0.x series while still staying ABI compatible. What this means is that applications written for the 1.0.x versions of D-Bus should still run unmodified using the 1.2.x library and bus.

D-Bus is a message bus system, a simple way for applications to talk to one another. In addition to interprocess communication, D-Bus helps coordinate process lifecycle; it makes it simple and reliable to code a “single instance” application or daemon, and to launch applications and daemons on demand when their services are needed.

Major Version Feature List

  • Features
    • The system bus now supports starting services on demand. This uses a setuid helper program because system bus daemon runs as a nobody user, while services it launches may need to run as a different user.
      • A design doc is available in doc/system-activation.txt
    • The TCP address format has been enhanced, such that TCP may be actually usable.
      • The dbus-daemon man page describes the new elements in the address format.
    • Support ANONYMOUS mechanism for authentication, which allows a client to authenticate as nobody in particular
      • The ANONYMOUS support means you can now use D-Bus (without a bus daemon) as a protocol for a network service provided to anonymous Internet or LAN clients.
    • Autolaunched busses now save their parameters in X11 if possible making them behave closer to busses launched through the normal mechanisms
    • inotify is now the default backend for watching configuration file changes
    • Better thread support.
    • The bus daemon now generates a globally-unique ID for itself.
      • Use this as a unique ID for a user’s session, for example.
    • Support for message serialization added for use with external transports like TUBES!!!
    • Better eavesdropping support now picks up reply messages for debugging
  • Library API additions
    • dbus_connection_set_allow_anonymous() – allow the message stream to begin if the client auths as anonymous (otherwise, the client will be dropped unless they auth as a user).
    • dbus_watch_get_unix_fd() – replaces dbus_watch_get_fd
    • dbus_watch_get_socket() – replaces dbus_watch_get_fd
    • dbus_server_get_id() – available to access the unique ID of a particular address
    • dbus_connection_get_server_id() – available to access the unique ID of a particular address
    • dbus_message_marshal() – serializes a message into a byte array
    • dbus_message_demarshal() – de-serializes a byte array into a message
  • Library API deprecations
    • dbus_watch_get_fd() – had unclear cross-platform semantics
  • Protocol additions
    • Argument path matching of the type arg0path=’/aa/bb/’ is now supported
    • New error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ObjectPathInUse added
    • ANONYMOUS auth support added
    • GetAll call added to the properties interface for getting a list of properties an object exports

Release Notes

  • This is the next generation supported STABLE release of D-Bus. For all intents and purposes this is the 1.2.0 release WITHOUT the planned X11/MIT license change due to a couple of license holders who have yet to respond. For the most part this license change is being pursued to simplify licensing issues and fix a couple of licensing corner cases. When this happens D-Bus will be released under the 1.2.0 version.
  • D-Bus 1.0.x effectively goes into security fix mode and will only be updated for major issues.
  • Fixed CVE-2008-0595 – security policy of the type <allow send_interface= “some.interface.WithMethods“/> work as an implicit allow for messages sent without an interface bypassing the default deny rules and potentially allowing restricted methods exported on the bus to be executed by unauthorized users.
  • Fixes dbus-launch so the session bus goes away so does D-Bus
  • Builds against latest gcc/glibc changes
  • Correctly unref connections without guids during shutdown
  • About the name: Submitted by Greg K Nicholson, Coniston Water is a lake in Cumbria, England where several water speed records have been broken. Between 1956 and 1959 Sir Malcolm’s son Donald Campbell set four successive records on the lake in Bluebird K7, a hydroplane. Wikipedia

Get D-Bus 1.1.20 “Coniston Water”!!!

Go to the D-Bus web site for more information.

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