DConf configuration system

[Waldo Bastian]

On Wednesday 06 April 2005 23:36, Chris Lee wrote:
> GConf is cool, and I'm glad that GNOME has it. It's great for them. It
> doesn't have the same features that KConfig has, and renaming it to
> DConf or D-Conf or anything similar is NOT going to make it more
> attractive to us. It's not going to fix the lack of Kiosk-mode, nor is
> it going to magically make it work with our KConfigXT framework or help
> to automatically migrate our users current, existing KConfig settings.

GConf has some kiosk features but they seem to be a bit awkward to use. 
KConfigXT was designed in such a way that it will be possible to use it with 
other config frameworks without too much conversion pain, in fact KConfigXT 
allows us exactly to automatically migrate our users current, existing 
KConfig settings to something else. Unfortunately a significant number of 
KConfig settings are still not covered by KConfigXT, so the benefit is 
limited here.

GConf has some features that KConfig lacks, the most notable ones are proper 
change notification and multi-level grouping.

By combining the best of GConf and KConfig you can get a better solution that 
is an improvement for each of them. And you get extra bonus points if in the 
process all applications end up using the same config system.

I know that quite a few people would like to be able to use KDE's KioskTool to 
configure OpenOffice.org: having a common config system would make that a lot 
easier.

I would also like to point out that there are two important aspects to any 
config system: the API towards the application and the actual on-disk storage 
format (backend). Being flexible in the choice of backend makes a smooth 
upgrade possible because it will then be possible to change the overall 
config system but let end-users have the choice to continue to use their 
current KConfig (.ini-style) based settings for KDE applications.

Now let's call this new config system DConf. The question then is whether you 
start with GConf and turn that into DConf, or whether you take something like 
UniConf and add the missing pieces there.

> UniConf is also cool, if slightly crack-induced and scary. But the tech
> is cool and the demos that Avery posted are pretty exciting from a pure
> "Holy crap, you can actually do that?" standpoint.

Yes, so it would be fun if you could use all that coolness for your KDE 
settings.

Cheers,
Waldo
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