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

[Arun Raghavan]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2016, at 02:06 PM, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> 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.

Sure, making sure there's a smooth transition is important, but IMO it's
orthogonal to supporting GConf. It's not great to have GSettings as an
option and then push the decision of whether config should break or not
out to distribution.

-- Arun