Re: Stage one finished

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

The problem with this approach is that we'll have a huge change to gconf
with no way to understand what the delta is between current and new.

If I can suggest a somewhat different approach.

1. Create a new client library. It should include the schema loading as
in
 http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/plans.html
 (implement the first 3 items there, they are all client library 
  features, not daemon features)
 This lib can be entirely outside the gconf tree.
 Have docs and a spec for the schemas format and lookup, and the dbus 
 interface.
 Have a new gconftool equivalent that isn't such a mess and that skips
all
 the schemas/makefile-install-rule crap.

2. Write a test suite for this library that verifies the semantics of 
   the docs and spec via automated "make check"; or maybe better, write
   a test suite in the form of an executable that can be run inside
   a desktop session, that verifies that the current desktop correctly
   implements the dbus interfaces.

3. Adapt the gconf daemon to export the dbus interface and submit that 
   patch as the gconf source tree change; alternatively, write 
   a new daemon using the markup backend source code.

This way you have a new library (which is needed anyhow; we shouldn't
pile the new stuff into the old cruft library) and you have a single-
purpose, reviewable patch to the gconf sources.

Havoc