Re: TODO #1: GNOME 1.x and 2.0 interoperability

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Dietmar Maurer <dietmar ximian com> writes:
> Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> > Dietmar Maurer <dietmar ximian com> writes:
> > > > The one where all settings are in one big file?
> > >
> > > No, take a look at: bonobo-conf/monikers/bonobo-config-dirdb.[ch]
> > >
> >
> > Sorry, silly me - I'm looking at "bonobo-config" not "bonobo-conf"
> >
> > Well, that's great that you've gratuitously reimplemented something
> > exactly the same as the GConf XML backend, with minor changes some
> > better some worse.
> 
> Minor changes? And what is worse?
> 

<irrelevant>
Minor changes - you have a bunch of XML files representing config
values stored at filename-like keys. The files even have % in the name
like the GConf backend. You redid the XML format and moved from a dir
hierarchy to a flat directory. Woo.

Worse - well, 'grep errno' and 'grep strerror' come up empty, for one
thing. 

Better - the code is nicely simpler, I think mostly because you didn't
use a directory hierarchy. I'm not sure how the tradeoffs work out
here.
</irrelevant>

But this is beside the point.

The point is this: you can't justify totally reimplementing GConf and
creating all kinds of problems if your reimplementation is just the
same, modulo small details.  I could go on all day about small tweaks
we could make to bonobo-config, or that we could make to GConf itself.
If you were just worried about flat dir vs. hierarchy, or the file
format, you could easily have a GConf backend that worked your way.

If you had some radically different system, or a different license
(btw bonobo-conf doesn't have a license in COPYING or the source
files), or were desktop-independent, or some other compelling
difference, then OK, but your system is just like GConf with minor
changes. It's like claiming you have the "Recycle Bin" instead of the
"Trash" - ooh it's so different.  I designed GConf from scratch, you
copied the idea and changed the names of all the functions and then
with the benefit of hindsight put snide little comments about GConf in
various places in the code.

The difference between GConf and bonobo-config are just whether we use
the Bonobo type system and conventions or the GLib ones. This is
syntactic sugar. It is not a justification for creating two config
database systems or having two in GNOME.

Now, again, you are free to do what you want, but I want a discussion
and rationale before the GNOME Project goes this route. Having both
GConf and a non-wrapper bonobo-config is pure bloat and screws over
sysadmins.

Havoc