An analysis about a generic desktop application configuration management system

[Avery Pennarun]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 11:23:42PM +0100, Richard Moore wrote:

> I agree notifications and network transparency would be nice. Certainly
> for the former, adding support to KConfig would be easier than any change
> of the underlying implementation.

Actually, I've personally ripped out and replaced all of KConfig's
implementation to make it talk to UniConf instead, so I know quite a bit
about how KConfig works.  (I don't know much about KConfigXT, but it seems
separate from this question.)

I can say I'm pretty sure KConfig will mostly need to be redesigned - on the
inside, not the API - in order to implement cross-process notifications. 
The problem is that to get cross-process notifications, you'll either need a
FAM-like thingy, a daemon, or at least broadcasts over something like DCOP. 
All of these are major implementation changes that add up to about as many
lines of code as KConfig already has.

If you're going to rip the guts out and replace them anyway, you might as
well replace them with an implementation that someone else already wrote and
tested carefully.

Of course the API would also need to be slightly extended to allow you to
register for notifications, but that would be backwards-compatible (you
don't *have* to register if you don't care) and easy, so it's okay.

Have fun,

Avery