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+
+/*!
+ \page intro-to-dbus.html
+ \title Introduction to D-Bus
+ \brief An introduction to Inter-Process Communication and Remote Procedure Calling with D-Bus.
+
+ \keyword QtDBus
+ \ingroup frameworks-technologies
+
+ \section1 Introduction
+
+ D-Bus is an Inter-Process Communication (IPC) and Remote Procedure
+ Calling (RPC) mechanism originally developed for Linux to replace
+ existing and competing IPC solutions with one unified protocol. It
+ has also been designed to allow communication between system-level
+ processes (such as printer and hardware driver services) and
+ normal user processes.
+
+ It uses a fast, binary message-passing protocol, which is suitable
+ for same-machine communication due to its low latency and low
+ overhead. Its specification is currently defined by the
+ \tt{freedesktop.org} project, and is available to all parties.
+
+ Communication in general happens through a central server
+ application, called the "bus" (hence the name), but direct
+ application-to-application communication is also possible. When
+ communicating on a bus, applications can query which other
+ applications and services are available, as well as activate one
+ on demand.
+
+ \section1 The Buses
+
+ D-Bus buses are used to when many-to-many communication is
+ desired. In order to achieve that, a central server is launched
+ before any applications can connect to the bus: this server is
+ responsible for keeping track of the applications that are
+ connected and for properly routing messages from their source to
+ their destination.
+
+ In addition, D-Bus defines two well-known buses, called the
+ system bus and the session bus. These buses are special in the
+ sense that they have well-defined semantics: some services are
+ defined to be found in one or both of these buses.
+
+ For example, an application wishing to query the list of hardware
+ devices attached to the computer will probably communicate to a
+ service available on the system bus, while the service providing
+ opening of the user's web browser will be probably found on the
+ session bus.
+
+ On the system bus, one can also expect to find restrictions on
+ what services each application is allowed to offer. Therefore, one
+ can be reasonably certain that, if a certain service is present,
+ it is being offered by a trusted application.
+
+ \section1 Concepts
+
+ \section2 Messages
+
+ On the low level, applications communicate over D-Bus by sending
+ messages to one another. Messages are used to relay the remote
+ procedure calls as well as the replies and errors associated
+ with them. When used over a bus, messages have a destination,
+ which means they are routed only to the interested parties,
+ avoiding congestion due to "swarming" or broadcasting.
+
+ A special kind of message called a "signal message"
+ (a concept based on Qt's \l {Signals and Slots} mechanism),
+ however, does not have a pre-defined destination. Since its
+ purpose is to be used in a one-to-many context, signal messages
+ are designed to work over an "opt-in" mechanism.
+
+ The QtDBus module fully encapsulates the low-level concept of
+ messages into a simpler, object-oriented approach familiar to Qt
+ developers. In most cases, the developer need not worry about
+ sending or receiving messages.
+
+ \section2 Service Names
+
+ When communicating over a bus, applications obtain what is
+ called a "service name": it is how that application chooses to be
+ known by other applications on the same bus. The service names
+ are brokered by the D-Bus bus daemon and are used to
+ route messages from one application to another. An analogous
+ concept to service names are IP addresses and hostnames: a
+ computer normally has one IP address and may have one or more
+ hostnames associated with it, according to the services that it
+ provides to the network.
+
+ On the other hand, if a bus is not used, service names are also
+ not used. If we compare this to a computer network again, this
+ would equate to a point-to-point network: since the peer is
+ known, there is no need to use hostnames to find it or its IP
+ address.
+
+ The format of a D-Bus service name is in fact very similar to a
+ host name: it is a dot-separated sequence of letters and
+ digits. The common practice is even to name one's service name
+ according to the domain name of the organization that defined
+ that service.
+
+ For example, the D-Bus service is defined by
+ \tt{freedesktop.org} and can be found on the bus under the
+ service name:
+
+ \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_introtodbus.qdoc 0
+
+ \section2 Object Paths
+
+ Like network hosts, applications provide specific services to
+ other applications by exporting objects. Those objects are
+ hierarchically organised, much like the parent-child
+ relationship that classes derived from QObject possess. One
+ difference, however, is that there is the concept of "root
+ object", that all objects have as ultimate parent.
+
+ If we continue our analogy with Web services, object paths
+ equate to the path part of a URL:
+
+ \img qurl-ftppath.png
+
+ Like them, object paths in D-Bus are formed resembling path
+ names on the filesystem: they are slash-separated labels, each
+ consisting of letters, digits and the underscore character
+ ("_"). They must always start with a slash and must not end with
+ one.
+
+ \section2 Interfaces
+
+ Interfaces are similar to C++ abstract classes and Java's
+ \c interface keyword and declare the "contract" that is
+ established between caller and callee. That is, they establish
+ the names of the methods, signals and properties that are
+ available as well as the behavior that is expected from either
+ side when communication is established.
+
+ Qt uses a very similar mechanism in its \l {How to Create Qt
+ Plugins}{Plugin system}: Base classes in C++ are associated
+ with a unique identifier by way of the Q_DECLARE_INTERFACE()
+ macro.
+
+ D-Bus interface names are, in fact, named in a manner similar to
+ what is suggested by the Qt Plugin System: an identifier usually
+ constructed from the domain name of the entity that defined that
+ interface.
+
+ \section2 Cheat Sheet
+
+ To facilitate remembering of the naming formats and their
+ purposes, the following table can be used:
+
+ \table 90%
+ \header \o D-Bus Concept \o Analogy \o Name format
+ \row \o Service name \o Network hostnames \o Dot-separated
+ ("looks like a hostname")
+ \row \o Object path \o URL path component \o Slash-separated
+ ("looks like a path")
+ \row \o Interface \o Plugin identifier \o Dot-separated
+ \endtable
+
+ \section1 Debugging
+
+ When developing applications that use D-Bus, it is sometimes useful to be able
+ to see information about the messages that are sent and received across the
+ bus by each application.
+
+ This feature can be enabled on a per-application basis by setting the
+ \c QDBUS_DEBUG environment variable before running each application.
+ For example, we can enable debugging only for the car in the
+ \l{D-Bus Remote Controlled Car Example} by running the controller and the
+ car in the following way:
+
+ \snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_introtodbus.qdoc QDBUS_DEBUG
+
+ Information about the messages will be written to the console the application
+ was launched from.
+
+ \section1 Further Reading
+
+ The following documents contain information about Qt's D-Bus integration
+ features, and provide details about the mechanisms used to send and receive
+ type information over the bus:
+
+ \list
+ \o \l{Using QtDBus Adaptors}
+ \o \l{The QtDBus Type System}
+ \o \l{QtDBus XML compiler (qdbusxml2cpp)}
+ \endlist
+*/