Fwd: The Strengths and Weakness of Fedora/RHEL OS management

Avi Alkalay avi at unix.sh
Fri Mar 31 18:23:51 UTC 2006


On 3/31/06, Toshio Kuratomi <toshio at tiki-lounge.com> wrote:
> So Elektra's end goal is a common on-disk format?  And libelektra is a
> "reference implementation" providing an API that the developers think is
> sane?  Which clears up the following areas:

It can be on-disk, or remote. It depends on the backend you'll use.
Currently we only have local on-disk backends as filesys and the
superfast Berkeley DB.

The initiative has 3 focus areas:

1. Definition of a standard key/value pair hierarchy, namespace and
semantics. Se some written standards-by-example here:
http://www.germane-software.com/repositories/elektra/trunk/doc/specs/

2. API implementation to access the key/value pairs namespace

3. Produce quality patches for popular softwares as X.org, Samba,
KDE's KConfig XT and Gnome's GConf

While thightly integrated to focus 1, focus 2 can be redone without
compromising the work made on focus 1 because this last is 100%
conceptual.


> * GConf as a backend was not a real long term direction for the
> software.

Yes. Was just a test. GConf is higher level compared to Elektra, so
doesn't make sense to put Elektra on top of GConf. What we'll have in
near future is GConf and KConfig XT on top of Elektra, so all G- and
K-apps will be automatically elektrified, without changing a comma in
their source. And more: G-apps will be able to access K-apps configs
and vice-versa. Even more: we finaly will be able to have one single
place for general things like proxy configuration, desktop background,
etc (althought Elektra is more than just desktop configuration).


> * Making Elektra a backend to GConf/KConfig/etc is providing an
> additional API rather than the canonical one.  It doesn't compromise the
> core goal of a common on-disk format.

I'm not sure if I understand this due to my english limitations. But I
think an answer is in my previous paragraph.

There is a very graphical and easy to understand OOo presentation
about Elektra, updated this morning, at
http://www.germane-software.com/repositories/elektra/trunk/doc/elektra.odp

I delivered an old version of it on KDE's Akademy event few years ago
in Germany. And will be probably delivered again this year in Desktop
Symposium in Ottawa.

Regards,
Avi




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