DConf configuration system

[Avery Pennarun]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 05:36:01PM -0400, Chris Lee wrote:

> Avery Pennarun wrote:
> >The real question is: what is the problem we are trying to solve by
> >creating an XDG standard for this?
> 
> Ah, and that's the fun part. See, it turns out, this is a solution in 
> search of a problem.

This is not exactly true.  As Patrick mentioned, there are real problems
here in need of a solution.  I, for one, have those problems.  However, I
think many of the people currently pushing for DConf actually don't have
those problems, which is why I was wondering what their actual goals are.

My ideal world is one where I won't spend the rest of my life writing
UniConf plugins that convert data between dozens of configuration systems,
and yet I can have all the power of UniConf.  All we need for that is one or
two configuration systems that "almost" everyone uses.  Anything that gets
me to that world sooner will be welcome :)

> Basically, it appears that certain people have decided it would be a 
> good idea to start taking GNOME applications and pushing them up the 
> stack - like GConf.

This isn't exactly fair.  While things like that were said by a few people,
there were also a lot of thoughtful comments about the potential design of
DConf.  For example, it is a fact that GConf-2 has a *superset* of the
features in KConfig from KDE3.  I know, because I wrote UniConf plugins for
both.  I don't know about the extensions in the newest KConfig incarnation;
I should learn about it.  But it is not *obviously stupid* to try to adapt
GConf-2 to KDE, because I did, and it works fine.

The CORBA has to go, but that's a relatively minor amount of work, and I
think all previous DConf discussions (there have been several :)) have
settled on that much.  Meanwhile, nobody from the KDE camp has contributed
any suggestions for what a KDE configuration system would require that
GConf-2 doesn't already provide.

> UniConf is also cool, if slightly crack-induced and scary.

Um, thanks. :)

Have fun,

Avery