Re: GConf vs. bonobo-config

[Ramiro Estrugo <ramiro fateware com>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Another point is that moving from GConf to bonobo-config has NEVER
> been discussed in any forum that I've seen. Nautilus uses GConf,
> George is coding up Pong to use with GConf, GConf is the current plan
> for config storage. Bonobo guys have been hacking on their thing, but
> replacing GConf as the current GNOME solution needs to be discussed
> and evaluated. This has NOT happened. Well, the only discussion has
> been on gconf-list and it was hardly concluded in bonobo-config's
> favor.
> 
> Havoc
> 

Now that there are shipping products that use GConf (Nautilus of course,
but others like gnome-vfs) I feel would be bad for end users if it is
replaced with a newer slightly incompatible configuration solution.  

I don't want to argue about the technicalities of either solution,
because they are just that.  

Id like to beg you to empathize with the user a little bit.  If we use a
new configuration mechanism when we port Nautilus to GNOME 2.0, what are
the consequences for the user ?  They lose all their old settings ?  We
have to write a backward compatible layer of some kind that complicates
and already complex system even more ?  We have a choice to stick with
GConf and be different that the rest of GNOME apps (Evolution maybe) ? 
We decide we don't have the bandwidth to deal with the new system
because we have the experience of KNOWING how much time and energy we
already spent getting the current solution to work ?

Im sorry if im muddying the waters even more.  I feel this is a lose
lose situation for both potential developers of the GNOME platform but
most importantly the end users, and that makes me sad.

-re