Re: GConf vs. bonobo-config

[Dietmar Maurer <dietmar ximian com>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:

> Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com> writes:
> > What forking?  We have not forked GConf.  I would not have wanted to
> > reuse GConf because of its architectural issues.
>
> bonobo-config has the same architecture nearly exactly. Which you
> would know if you had surveyed prior art in this area.
>
> In fact I should have a big credit in the bonobo-config docs "this is
> a reimplementation of Havoc's GConf architecture using Bonobo-native
> idioms."

I think the term "architecture" is a bit misleading. I am sure Miguel
don't want to say that the overall design is bad. Instead I think he is
talking about what you are calling implementation details (using
CORBA_any, monikers, bonobo, ...)

Sorry if you got the impression that I do not respect your work. I have
just added the above notice to the documentation.

> > Not everyone agreed, and that is why GtkHTML and Evolution did drop
> > GConf support (partially to its unstability and problems).
>
> I have gotten zero bug reports on this. I'm genuinely interested in
> solving any problems you had. I can't believe you just paid Dietmar to
> work on something for months instead of reporting a bug. What a waste
> of everyone's time.

bonobo-conf is not only a configuration database. That's only a small
part of it.

> And even funnier, I bet the issue was OAF running two gconfd or zero
> gconfd, not even a GConf bug. Sadly no one has ever fixed OAF.
>
> Well, Evolution can do as it likes, but using the standard config
> system should be a requirement for inclusion in GNOME releases.

bonobo-config is using monikers and the PropertyBag interface, so
evolution will not depend on any special database backend. It would be
even possible to use the "gconf:" moniker ;-)

- Dietmar