Configuration Files

[Jayesh Badwaik]

Hi,

I have the following idea. With the desktops becoming increasingly
customizable
and much of  the data now being stored in the desktop enviroment
implementation
specific format (for example nepomuk and strigi's file index). , I was
thinking may be
its time to consider separation of user configuration data from user data.

For example, I used to have a dual boot of an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and a Fedora
14/15
on my laptop till a few days back. I started working on a project two years
ago and it just
got over now. I use my laptop for both software development  specific to
that project
(10.04 LTS)  and normal desktop use (Fedora 15).

Of course there was a mismatch of configuration files in the /home/<user>
directory.
The solutions to the problems were indicated by having a small and different
home
partitions and a common big data partition and then linking the folders in
data partition
to home partitions of the the directories.

As always, linking brings book-keeping on *my *part. I was thinking, what if
we implemented
this configuration in the system itself?

Basically what we can have is as follows:
The configuration files are stored in a separate partition, let say in the
directory /home.conf.d/<user>
where each OS mounts its own /home/conf.d/. The directory is owned by the
user and then the
functioning continues as before only that paths now change like
$HOME/.bashrc to $HOMECONF/.bashrc

other thing which can be done is that the filesystem of the configuration
files can be stored as a .img image
file in some directory (let say /etc/user.conf.d/) and then whenever the
system boots.. the img is mounted
onto some location defined as $HOMECONF and then the processing goes as
usual.

This would help in separating the programs from the actual user data and
hence allow more portability
of the user data. Right now even though you can port data between operating
systems. You
can frequently lose configurations due to the same(Using different version
of KDE on both OS).

However there is issue between handling of files like .bashrc which are OS
independent generally
and are sometimes really useful. Should we have to duplicate them, how do I
transfer from .bashrc from one
OS to other OS. That is the answer we might like to find out. One of my
suggestion is that such
architecture independent files can be stored in an folder in the $HOME
directory and that full folder
be linked to a appropriate directory in $HOMECONF during login and then
unlinked during logout.

I've never posted on the mailing list and this is my first idea. So I'll be
okay if you call it dumb.
I'll only learn in the process I guess.

Thanks


Cheers and Regards,
Jayesh Vinay Badwaik
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are servants rather than masters in mathematics   --- Charles Hermite
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/platform/attachments/20110911/cb7aa1de/attachment.html>