Env vars next generation

[Avery Pennarun]

On Mon, Dec 27, 2004 at 03:46:15AM +0100, Maciej Katafiasz wrote:

> Note that above exclude using any existing solution available right now,
> like GConf, since to my knowledge none has all or even most of
> properties listed. GConf for example cannot make setting be
> per-app-instance, cannot create ad-hoc hierarchies, etc.

For what it's worth, UniConf can do all of these things.  So could a trivial
DBus-based daemon.  It sounds like you want something like XResources, only
without the X.

> Implementation of these "env vars next gen" (thereafter called EVNG)
> would ideally find its way into OS kernel, just as today's envars did.

Environment variables were particularly trivial to implement in the kernel
because you could pass them into a new program's known-at-startup address
space layout the same way you create argv and the stack.  Anything that
changes at runtime is an order of magnitude more complicated, so the kernel
would find it hard to do (and there wouldn't be much advantage to doing it
in the kernel).

I think you should figure out some exact applications that you would use
this for, then find the existing system that's closest to your needs, then
figure out what you need to change in that system to make it do what you
want.

Have fun,

Avery