Re: GConf and bonobo-conf

[Byron Ellacott <bje apnic net>]

On 22 Feb 2001, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> Lets picture the key "EMail" which is of type string, lets say that
> the contract states that it contains a value like this:
> 	"enable", "disable", "forward"
> And then you decide to change the value contents to mean `internet
> address'.   

I'd just like to mention that I believe Colm's point isn't that a
key-value pair is more robust, which it clearly isn't, but rather when
you have a contractual change like the above, you invalidate a *single*
piece of data, rather than all the data clustered together in the
structure.

> Now, let me show you a counter example: read, write, lseek.  Those do
> not take data structures, still for 64 bit operations you are required
> to use their 64-bit counterparts (lseek64, etc).

I'm not sure I understand your point?

> Not really, a breakage in the contract is still a breakage in the
> contract.  See Sun vs Microsoft.

(In the above case, I'd also be strongly in favour of renaming the EMail
field when you reassign the meaning of its contents; the old field, if
its values are no longer meaningful, can be safely ignored.)

-- 
bje