Re: global proxy settings

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Alex Graveley <alex ximian com> writes: 
> The problem is that I have different proxy settings for when my laptop
> is home and when its at work (not to mention network settings, nfs/samba
> sharing, etc).  As I understand it, the location manager lets me create
> profiles and switch between them to adjust these settings.  

So that brings in the "how" - which apps participate in this, what
APIs do they need to use, where is the data stored; are the profiles
per-session or cross-session; which settings are per-profile and which
are global; etc.
 
Harder: for network, samba, etc. settings - this stuff isn't even
GNOME, it has to work in to the operating system's possible idea of a
profile, for example. What's the plan there. What if an OS already has
profiles as part of its PCMCIA infrastructure.

Or: if the profile involves both systemwide and per-user settings, how
does that all interact; where is the active profile stored - do I need
to be root to change it? Can I change it without using the GUI?

Anyway, just some offhand questions. I don't expect you to answer
them, I just would expect some kind of comprehensive design doc that
addresses this sort of stuff if the feature were proposed for
adoption. Otherwise I don't feel like I'd understand the implications
for how to do the control center, GNOME apps, and do the distribution
integration work.

Let's leave it for post-2.0 ;-)

> I don't know what gconf workgroup administration is.

GConf is intended to be a solution for administering a lot of
computers in a workgroup. So you can set up defaults, mandatory
settings, etc.  and there's theoretically a tool (gconf-editor in CVS)
that lets you do that. gconftool is already there as a primitive tool.

BTW, this should all be on desktop-devel-list ;-)

Havoc