Re: GSettings and you

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 15:31 -0700, Sandy Armstrong wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Matthias Clasen
> <matthias clasen gmail com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Shaun McCance
> >
> >> How do I use the keyfile backend? 'export GSETTINGS_BACKEND=keyfile'
> >> gives me this:
> >>
> >> Can't find GSettings backend 'keyfile' given in GSETTINGS_BACKEND
> >> environment variable
> >>
> >> I don't have anything under $libdir/gio/modules. Did I miss something?
> >
> > The keyfile backend is built in, that is why it doesn't show up in the
> > modules dir. But it is not really meant to be used in that 'global'
> > fashion by setting the env var. Instead, you can use it for selected
> > schemas, by doing the following:
> >
> > g_settings_backend_setup_keyfile ("blah", filename);
> > settings = g_settings_new_with_context ("org.bla.bla", "blah");
> >
> > After that, settings that you get or set with that settings object
> > will be backed by the keyfile named filename. Note that you still need
> > to have an installed schema for "org.bla.bla".
> 
> Is the intent of the keyfile backend (at least, in a typical GNOME
> desktop) to have us store application state separate from settings?

My guess is that it would be there as a fallback when neither GConf, nor
dconf are available, for barebones command-line applications for
example.

One good question though, will we have to keep the setenv() hacks in the
future, or will GSettings grow knowledge of the priority of the
different backends?