D-Conf

[Jamie McCracken]

Sean Middleditch wrote:

> More to everyone in general on this topic, not specifically a reply to
> this post:
> 
> Does this hypothetical configuration system REALLY need to be designed
> to handle early boot up or anything like that?  Is that perhaps just a
> tad bit of over-engineering for a DESKTOP configuration system?  Does
> early bootup even NEED a new configuration system?  Do the early bootup
> guys WANT a new configuration system?  The target of the new
> configuration system is desktop apps, so there's not a whole lot to gain
> by worrying but applications outside your target application set.

Definitely desktop and definitely user settings only - we can have a 
seperate system wide config for system stuff if its really needed.

> 
> Does the configuration system really need multiple backends, instead of
> just writing one good one and leaving it at that?  Aside from a single
> fast, efficient, secure, safe local-storage mechanism and a single
> usable remote-storage mechanism, what other backends could you need? 

THe only one that would satisfy me is a proper DB (berkeley DB at the 
bare minimum though I would want something more powerful/expandable). 
The XML stuff is very inefficient but some people want it cause you can 
edit it in a text file. If you cant please everyone then unfortunately 
we will end up with multiple backends.

On a side note Im planning to write a per user multithreaded daemon for 
an embedded SQL DB for general purpose use (I will call it DDS - desktop 
data server) and it should provide a very fast storage solution for all 
the metadata, config, preferences and indexing facilities a desktop 
needs (so you can kiss goodbye to all those horrible dot files). It can 
be used as a backend to GConf and likewise for the other systems. (Im 
thinking of using Dbus as the transport mechanism for the DDS too)

I also want to create another dbus based daemon for indexing/metadata 
crawling that uses the DDS - its a bit like beagle but more powerful and 
flexible and it will be suitable for freedesktop use (ie no additional 
dependencies apart from the DB). And if all goes well this can then be 
tied into D-VFS to create a virtual DB based filesystem much like 
microsoft's WinFS :)

jamie.