Re: Storing file references in GConf

[Chipzz <chipzz ULYSSIS Org>]

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Jody Goldberg wrote:

> From: Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>
> Subject: Re: Storing file references in GConf
>
> On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 07:53:04PM -0400, Ettore wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > as Havoc pointed out before, storing absolute filenames (e.g.
> > /home/ettore/foo/bar.txt) in GConf is evil.  If you do that, your
> > settings become dependant on the physical location of your home
> > directory, which causes trouble if you are mounting your home from
> > different machines, or if you are trying to migrate a bunch of
> > data/settings from one machine to another.  So, the right thing is to
> > store only a home-relative path instead (foo/bar.txt).
>
> $HOME is a useful symbolic path, but there are likely to be others.
> The first that comes to mind is <prefix>.  It production settings
> where new versions are rolled out in parallel to the old ones its
> common to have multiple installs.  This would also bite people
> dealing with different distros sharing a home dir (SuSE vs RH).

Another one is $CWD. Suppose I write a program gcp which acts just like
cp except it can handle gnome-vfs uris. Logical behaviour would be to
resolve relative filenames relative to the $CWD.

kr,

Chipzz AKA
Jan Van Buggenhout
-- 

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                 UNIX isn't dead - It just smells funny
                           Chipzz ULYSSIS Org
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