Re: Module proposal: dconf



There are a number of difficulties if there is no proper migration of end users. - users often have forgotten the settings they made since they don't often upgrade their systems. (you as a developer is used to frequent update and things are generally fresh in memory, that makes it easier) - If the system admin has to set it up again for the user manually that will be a lots of supports calls. - Users do not get a good impression of the system should some important behavior changes without an easy fix.

Of course, migration tools are generally only useful for a short period of time. If we do not plan it well, it will be literally a wasted efforts. That is by the times the majority of users have gotten the poor 'experience', they adjusted to it and moved on.

Still, do we want to risk the GNOME reputation against obviously some hard works ? To probe a further further, are there measurable improvement in performance to switch from gconf to dconf/gsettings that can help us to justify the proposed changes [1]?

-Ghee
[1] I like to acknowledge that Ryan did some Great works here! Still these is a question I feel important to ask :)

Ryan Lortie wrote:
On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 13:34 +0200, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
I think it makes sense to do the migration for all the apps at once.
Also, the migration from gconf can be done directly from dconf, the
first time it starts, or even it could be clever enough to synchronize
changes from gconf every time it starts, to cover apps that migrate to
dconf later. That would remove the apps' responsibility to do the
migration, which would be a lot of code to have that in all
applications.

I personally think migration is less critical than a lot of people
think.

Here's why (for me at least):

  - I often reinstall my distro when the new release comes out

  - GConf (and GSettings) are not used to store "important" things like
    emails, bookmarks, contacts, cookies, passwords, ...

  - we're changing how our entire desktop looks/feels at the same time
    anyway, so the user will need to reconfigure that stuff (if they
    please)

  - it never takes me more than a few minutes of fiddling to get stuff
back to "how i like it" in terms of settings.
  - doing some sort of automated migration encourages application
    developers to base their new settings schemas on the way they did
    things with GConf, rather than giving them a chance to have a 'clean
    break' and take full advantage of the new API (and also remove years
    of cruft).

It certainly makes sense to provide some mechanism for applications
using GConf to continue to function (note: this mechanism might be
"continue using GConf").  For applications that get ported, though,
*shrug*.

I'm open to disagreement on this point :)

Cheers

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