DConf configuration system

[Chris Lee]

Jamie McCracken wrote:
> Chris Lee wrote:
> 
>>
>> But what you guys have suggested doing, and have been trying to take 
>> steps towards, is a damned good way to make FreeDesktop less useful 
>> for everyone involved and specifically, in this instance, to piss off 
>> those of us who work on KDE. You've completely ignored the fact that 
>> there are several of us who are subscribed on this list, and you've 
>> insulted us multiple times over, which I can only hope is because you 
>> didn't realize that this is not Yet Another GNOME List.
> 
> Calm down.
> 
> I dont believe anyone here wanted to piss off any of the developers from 
> any desktop.

Amazingly, people sometimes do things they didn't intend. Surprise, 
actions have consequences! When you refer to members of a group in the 
third person, and they happen to be on the same list, reading the 
messages you're sending, and you're effectively saying that they're 
idiots, you *may* run the risk of angering a few of them. Just possibly.

And, for what it's worth, everyone who actually does real work seems to 
have their heads on straight. It wouldn't matter if this was called 
DConf, GGGGGGGGonfig, Z-settings, or 
shit-that-stores-preferences-and-we-really-like-long-names - people like 
Mikael and Zack have already pointed out, at least in KDE, we're going 
to evaluate it based on technical merit. GConf does not provide what we 
need, period. We're not using it, or anything based on it. Does GConf 
have an idea or two we'll steal for KDE4? You bet.

Case in point: GStreamer, which ::shock:: starts with a 'G', is 
currently under evaluation as one of the potential media frameworks for 
KDE4. Amazingly, guess what? We don't care that it starts with a G. It 
happens to be pretty cool, and a lot of us like it. If you think that 
the 'G' prefix is something that bothers us, please, think again.

> My understanding was DConf was attempting to gather requirements for a 
> cross desktop solution rather than bolting off and becoming a straight 
> clone of GConf. I have not seen the requirements if any exist but the 
> person in charge of it should be discussing these with the KDE and Gnome 
> teams so that we can get a solution thats acceptable.

That's not even close to what was proposed initially. The initial 
proposal was "Hey, GConf is really cool! Let's rename it DConf, and push 
it down the stack. The KDE developers are so stupid they won't even 
realize that it's really GConf, but we just did 'sed -e s/G/D/'! Haha."

So even if the proposal now changes, you have to understand, you've 
already started off on the wrong foot, and simply because we're already 
pretty fucking annoyed, we're much less likely to play ball.

> I personally dont care whether the solution is UniConf, DConf or some 
> other bastardised GConf based system just so long as we have something 
> usable and acceptable. The lack of synergy here between the big two DEs 
> in a very important freedesktop project is very worrying indeed :(

The fact of the matter is, once again, this proposal is a solution in 
search of a problem. UniConf bridges the different systems so if you 
*really* can't stand the idea of KConfig using .ini-formatted files to 
store its data, guess what? You can make it use GConf *already*.

Again. DConf, even though it does not yet exist, serves no actual 
purpose. You have wasted my time, and the time of countless other 
developers who read the messages on this list.

Let me explain. Not only would DConf be useless duplication of existing 
effort, but evangelizing it to different projects - including KDE and 
GNOME, not to mention OpenOffice.org and Mozilla and XFCE and ... - 
would take time, and effort, and the net result is that even *if* 
everyone adopted this cracktastic great new configuration system (which 
won't happen) they gain no major benefit from it. This won't help them 
work on Windows, or OS X.

--
Chris Lee
KDE developer