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Peter Vessenes | 15 Jun 2012 16:59

Suggestion for Simplifying development work

Hi all,

I've been wondering about whether it would be possible to wipe out the GUI completely from the satoshi client, and reimplement any necessary data requests as RPC calls, allowing us to fork -QT and other GUIs over and (hopefully) dramatically simplifying the codebase that you all have to work on.

Any thoughts about this? Once a week at least I find myself wanting to find ways to help speed up development, this seems like it could be a big win.

Peter

Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+

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Wladimir | 15 Jun 2012 17:59

Re: Suggestion for Simplifying development work

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 4:59 PM, Peter Vessenes <peter <at> coinlab.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I've been wondering about whether it would be possible to wipe out the GUI completely from the satoshi client, and reimplement any necessary data requests as RPC calls, allowing us to fork -QT and other GUIs over and (hopefully) dramatically simplifying the codebase that you all have to work on.

Splitting the UI into a seperate *process* is a long-term goal. The UI code is structured so that all communication with the core happens through a "bottleneck" (consisting of the model classes), so preparation has been under way.

However, the current RPC calls don't suffice to implement a full-featured, responsive UI. I'm not even sure JSON-RPC is a good fit for a UI<->core protocol, as it doesn't support bidirectional communication (at least without pretty ugly hacks).

But what exactly is the problem with having a GUI as part of the main client project? I don't see how it would "speed up development" to split the project. By far most of the users use the program through the UI so it is one of the drivers for requirements on the core, and I'd think it is pretty important to keep it a first-class citizen.

Wladimir

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threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/

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