Re: GConf vs. bonobo-config

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com> writes: 
> There is a pretty extensive discussion on GConf-list and the
> gnome-components-list as to why we decided to implement a new
> configuration mechanism.

<broken record>
No, there was a discussion of why you decided to provide a Bonobo
interface to GConf. Go read the thread. Go read the first announce for
bonobo-conf. They are about a WRAPPER.
</broken record>
 
The reason I didn't take your patch is that no reason was given a
wrapper would not work. And you still have not given such a reason.

So don't even pretend your code forking was justified for technical
reasons until you can come up with one.

> 	* Another C API that needs to be wrapped.

It does not need to be wrapped by language bindings, because language
bindings can wrap your bonobo-config wrapper. i.e. bonobo-config as a
wrapper solves this problem.

Moreover, the reason I gave at the time you last brought it up:
GConf the C API is something we've already committed to supporting. So
there is nothing to be gained by breaking it.

> 	* No support for arbitraryly complex data, programmer needs to
>           flatten out data structures.

Wrapper solves this.

> 	* Uses CORBA, shares with bonobo-conf the CORBA dependency,
>           without actually commiting to a sane CORBA interface that
>           can be reused.

Wrapper solves this.
 
> If people look at the code, you will see that Bonobo-Conf design is
> very nice, very clean and it is overall a better configuration system
> for the future.  

I'm still waiting to be shown the "database stack" code so I can
evaluate that.

I think the ability to have a default database stack is essential,
with e.g. workgroup-wide, company-wide, display-specific,
etc. defaults. For some reason you have consistently thought Evolution
should put its settings in ~/Evolution, but this entirely breaks the
goals of GConf and hoses sysadmins.

But anyway, I still haven't heard a reason that justifies
bonobo-config the REIMPLEMENTATION vs. bonobo-config the WRAPPER. You
guys seem to really, really miss this point.

Havoc