Re: Gnome 2.0: gnome-config and GConf and command-line

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

GConf replaces gnome-config. Don't use gnome-config.

-Seth

On Thu, 2002-08-01 at 00:23, Patrick wrote:
> Hi all.
> I'm designing an application which may use the following structure for
> loading configuration information. My application is called nox at the
> moment until I think of a real name for it.
> 
> 	- application defaults (standard defaults that can be relied on)
> 	- GConf (system configuration; potentially distributed?)
> 	- /etc/nox/nox.conf (system configuration -- fallback)
> 	- ~/.etc/nox/nox.conf
> 	- user supplied configuration files.
> 
> The idea is that settings can be overridden at each level to provide
> very specific control of the application when needed. Additionally, each
> configuration file does not need to be an exhaustive configuration. That
> is, each configuration file may only set a few options.
> 
> The configuration file will mostly consist of various resources that can
> be loaded. Examples include: plugins, device profiles, gradient
> libraries, pattern libraries, image libraries, and save/load profiles.
> 
> Now to the question: how permanent are the gnome-config libraries for
> managing configuration files? Since I have been unable to find 2.0 API
> documentation, I've been looking through 1.2/1.4 on developer.gnome.org.
> The "50% done" comment on the following link:
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/libgnome/libgnome.html
> doesn't give me much confidence. Was this in fact finished and is it
> available in 2.0 and will it continue to be supported for 2.2...?
> 
> Related to this I read in the gnome-config documenetation at the above
> link that the configuration file layout of gnome applications follows a
> different order than my intended search path.
> 
> 	- GConf (isn't around yet but is for 2.2)
> 	- $(sysconfdir)/gnome/config-override/nox.conf
> 	- $(sysconfdir)/gnome/config/nox.conf (system defaults)
> 	- ~/.gnome/nox.conf (per user defaults)
> 	- and per file conf files can be specified with the
> 	absolute path of the conf filename surrounded by "= ... ="
> 
> Is this still how things are done? This looks acceptable I suppose,
> given the fact that I will be depending on Gnome libraries already.
> However, I really *dislike* all the .files and .directories in ~ and
> would much prefer it if my application configuration files could be kept
> neatly together in an out of the way place (.etc).
> 
> Another configuration question I have is with regards to versioning of
> the conf files. Is there a recommended way to version conf files?  I'm
> think of having a mandatory section in the conf file as follows:
> 
> [nox]
> ConfVersion=0.0.0
> ...
> 
> In this way each conf is associated with a particular version of the
> Conf format for the application. I would like to have a tree structure
> for this so that the conf file can contain different paths for multiple
> versions and I noticed that evolution stores some configuration settings
> in an XML format... is this accessible by some standard gnome libraries
> or is this an evolution-only solution?
> 
> On the other hand, I prefer the simplicity of the gnome-config files so
> I'm not sure that I would use it anyway...
> 
> Finally, I a few quick comments on command-line options. Are there any
> recommended standard switches or variations of the following that I'm
> missing?
> 	--version, -v
> 	--conf "uri", -c "uri"	Comma seperated list of conf files
> 	--verbose		Program will print out messages when
> 				it makes assumptions and explain
> 				longer actions...
> 	--silent, -s		No GUI. requires one of the confs
> 				to contain an initial scripts section or
> 				it just returns to the command-line.
> 	--nosplash
> 
> I'd like to keep the command-line options short and sweet.
> 
> 
> Patrick.
> 
> 
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