Re: Module proposal: dconf

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 18:19 +0100, Iain wrote:
> While not disagreeing with you on the need for migration
> 
> > * A bunch of metadata related to synchronization that, if lost,
> > requires you to "start over", which an upgrading user might find to be
> > a hassle
> > * List of "pinned" notes that always show up in tomboy tray menu
> > * Some keys used to determine if it's the first run
> 
> were the sort of things that were never meant to be stored in GConf
> because write access to the GConf DB is not guarenteed so the user
> cannot set anything.
> In these cases the keys used to determine if it's the first run could
> never be set, so it would always be the first run for the user, pinned
> notes would never be pinned and synchronization would always require
> you to start over.
> 
> These things should have been stored with a GKeyFile in the
> ~/.config/Tomboy directory, IMO

People say that, but I think most applications do just
assume the settings in GConf are writable.  I know I
don't have any code to disable the preferences in Yelp
if the settings aren't writable.

The only use case I can see for read-only settings is
a lockdown setup, e.g. for a public Internet terminal.
And in that case, I'd make the home directory read-only
as well, so the whole point is moot.

Regardless, many applications store useful information
in GConf, whether we think that's right or not.  Losing
all that data would seriously suck.

--
Shaun