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+# Registries, Reflection, Introspection Implementation for UNO
+
+The UNO types and services bootstrapping code is very old, and concepts
+are tightly knit together. Whenever you want to change something you risk
+backwards incompatibility. The code causes mental pain, and whenever
+you need to touch it you want to run away screaming. One typically ends
+up doing minimally invasive changes. That way, you have a chance of
+surviving the process. But you also pile up guilt.
+
+At the heart of the matter there is the old binary "store" file structure
+and the `XRegistry` interface on top of it. At runtime, both all the UNO
+type information (scattered across a number of binary `.rdb` files) and
+all the UNO service information (scattered across a number of `.rdb` files
+that used to be binary but have been mostly changed to XML now) are
+represented by a single `XRegistry` instance each.
+
+The way the respective information is represented in the `XRegistry`
+interface simply corresponds to the way the information is stored in the
+binary `.rdb` files. Those files are designed for storage of hierarchically
+nested small blobs of information. Hence, for example information about
+a UNO interface type `com.sun.star.foo.XBar` is stored in a nested "folder"
+with path `com - sun - star - foo - XBar`, containing little blobs of
+information about the type's ancestors, its methods, etc. Similarly
+for information about instantiable services like `com.sun.star.baz.Boz`.
+
+As there are typically multiple `.rdb` files containing types resp.
+services (URE specific, LO specific, from extensions, ...), but they need
+to be represented by a single `XRegistry` instance, so "nested registries"
+were invented. They effectively form a linear list of chaining `XRegistry`
+instances together. Whenever a path needs to be looked up in the top-level
+registry, it effectively searches through the linear list of nested
+registries. All with the cumbersome UNO `XRegistry` interface between
+the individual parts. Horror.
+
+When the XML service `.rdb`s were introduced, we chickened out (see above
+for rationale) and put them behind an `XRegistry` facade, so that they
+would seamlessly integrate with the existing mess. We postponed
+systematic clean-up to the pie-in-the-sky days of LibreOffice 4 (or, "once we'll
+become incompatible with OpenOffice.org," as the phrase used to be back then)