An analysis about a generic desktop application configuration management system

[Havoc Pennington]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 20:32 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> Such a system needs a lot requirements. You can find some of them
> here.
> 
I think you should dump the transactions requirement. It seems like it
should be useful, but in practice nobody has this and apps all work
fine.

>       * There's a need for a default backend database format that can
>         store Unicode data in a tree-like structure or in a structure
>         that emulates a tree. 

If you dump the transactions requirement you can go back to text files.
Using simpler text files is the major reason that KConfig is better than
GConf for system administrators, so text files are a significant plus.

>       * The system should be network transparant and an IETF protocol
>         for configuration access would be nice. 

I don't think this is important. You might want a network backend
eventually, but the only network communication needed is for the backend
to go out and fetch settings. You don't need network transparency
anywhere else in the system.

IETF protocol is useless. Widely-used protocol people want to use, maybe
LDAP, could be useful.

>       * The system should be integratable with source control systems
>         or other external tools for doing version control

If you use text files you can get this free.

Havoc