[pulseaudio-discuss] [PATCH] module-gsettings: new module to store configuration using gsettings

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Sat, 2016-09-10 at 09:06 +0530, Arun Raghavan wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 9 Sep 2016, at 11:19 PM, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, 2016-07-25 at 21:58 +0200, Sylvain Baubeau wrote:
> > > 
> > > 2016-04-26 12:47 GMT+02:00 Tanu Kaskinen <tanuk at iki.fi>:
> > > > 
> > > > * There doesn't seem to be support for migrating existing settings from
> > > > GConf to GSettings. paprefs will initially keep using GConf, so in the
> > > > transition period I think both module-gconf and module-gsettings should
> > > > be loaded. Settings stored in the two databases should be synchronized,
> > > > so that when paprefs is updated to use GSettings, the old settings will
> > > > be remembered.
> > > 
> > > I did write a patch for paprefs that moves from GConf to GSettings
> > > (available here : https://github.com/lebauce/paprefs). It provides a
> > > "paprefs.convert" file for the "gsettings-data-convert" utility that
> > > will migrate existing settings from GConf to GSettings. On Fedora,
> > > putting a .convert file into /usr/share/GConf/gsettings/ will trigger
> > > a migration of the settings at next boot IIRC.
> > 
> > I believe it's possible to implement a migration scheme that is
> > invisible to users. The proposed scheme is not seamless: when the user
> > upgrades the system, the old settings won't be available to paprefs
> > before the next login, and new settings won't have any effect either.
> > Also, there's no guarantee that pulseaudio and paprefs will get updated
> > synchronously. If pulseaudio is upgraded first, then... hmm... you
> > don't seem to be loading module-gsettings in default.pa. How do you
> > propose the daemon configuration to be updated? Should both modules be
> > loaded? Or should module-gconf be replaced by module-gsettings? So it's
> > unclear what happens if pulseaudio is upgraded first, but if paprefs is
> > upgraded first, then paprefs will not work until pulseaudio gets
> > updated, because there's nothing in the server that would react to
> > changes in the gsettings store.
> > 
> > I'm not necessarily demanding a perfect migration scheme, if Fedora is
> > ok with an imperfect one, but it has to be possible to build both
> > pulseaudio and paprefs with gconf and without gsettings, so that we
> > don't force this decision on all distributions. Pulseaudio clearly
> > satisfies this condition - gconf support is not dropped, and gsettings
> > is disabled by default - but your paprefs patch removes the option to
> > build it with gconf support.
> 
> Is GConf still used/relevant? My understanding is that it is broadly no
> longer encourage to be used at all.

Yes it's used. At least by us. Whether it's encourabed is a different
question. Users don't care about what technologies are encouraged or
not.

> So unless MATE and co. are actually using it, I don't think it's a bad
> idea to drop it (the paprefs dep can be upgraded to latest PA with
> gsettings-only support).

If the data migration is not entirely smooth for users, I want to let
distributions choose when to drop gconf support.

-- 
Tanu