Re: GConf and bonobo-config - some ideas

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Dietmar Maurer <dietmar ximian com> writes: 
> Still not convinced, because I would use a fixed key and a list to
> store that. Another example?
> 

A conceptual problem with a fixed key and list is that there's a race
condition adding/removing a value.  i.e. you have to get current list,
strip out a value or add a value, and set the list back.  For some
kinds of key you can imagine this being an issue. Say for example a
key used by gnome-vfs; you can definitely imagine two processes using
gnome-vfs at once, and therefore having gnome-vfs accessing the same
key at the same time.

There are of course some other inevitable race conditions, but this
one is more damaging than most.

Aside from that, fixed key and list assumes that:

 a) CORBA_any (or other equivalent feature) is a good idea 

 b) the list is sufficiently short to efficiently move from 
    the config server in one block anytime it changes (i.e. 
    with a bunch of keys in a directory you can access 
    only one of them instead of getting the whole list)

Havoc