Status of gconf -> dconf

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Mar 24 février 2009 15:33, Simo Sorce a écrit :

> Fair enough, but projects like augeas are proof that changing files
> (*from an application*) is not as easy as people make it seem.

Non-XML text formats are usually not designed for round-trip use (they
only sort-of work in read-only mode when the app never modifies its
configuration itself).

XML formats can be better but the kind of XML used by gconf is
certainly not an example of something user modifiable. Just because
XML can be used to create human-friendly syntaxes does not mean you
can avoid the design work to make them human-friendly.

If anything gconf is a prime example of an XML implementation by
people who didn't really understand how XML could work and made it
easy for other people who didn't understand it either to abuse it.

> I thik the suggestion was to split config files in multiple small
> files and use ACLs to control access to them.

IIRC Ted T'so explicitely said in its ext4 FOSDEM presentation this
kind of usage pattern was insanity and ext4 would not really support
it.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot