Re: GConf vs. bonobo-config

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 02:21:39AM +0100, Glynn Foster wrote:
> Martin Baulig wrote:
> > This is also quite funny. I do not remember that anyone cared about backwards compatibility when
> > GConf was initially added to the GNOME 1.x platform. It seemed quite natural for me that we were
> > switching to a new configuration scheme and that we can't read/write the old config with it.
> 
> Why are we so anal about back compatibility when switching [for all good effect] toolkits and not 
> anal about configuration? I don't understand this...

  For the record I agree that we should be extremely cautious about not
breaking users preferences stored if we migrate to a new format/code/whatever.
As an example existing hackers were very annoyed when they discovered that
a tiny fraction of XML (like) saved by libxml1 would break when attempted
to read by libxml2. Now those people are technically competent to understand
why this may break. Compare this to the possibility of breaking all preference
of end-users, honnestly that would be a disaster.

  We should be very cautious before deciding to do this (and this *really*
need to be decided (not by me I'm not involved in this part)), remember a
user get annoyed the first time something makes him loose time or data,
get pissed the second time, and will switch to another product if it happens
one time too much and if he have a choice (and Gnome is not in a position
where the user don't have the choice, and this is a *good* thing).

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat Network http://redhat.com/products/network/
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Sep 17-18 2001 Brussels Red Hat TechWorld http://www.redhat-techworld.com