Re: Panel's GConf usage

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 03:07:42PM -0500, Ettore Perazzoli wrote: 
> The major source of problem is the account list.  Each account has a
> bunch of properties like hostname, email address, etc, but also some
> preferences (eg. "don't delete mail from the POP server").
> 
> The way we "fixed" it is that we just use a string list, and each of the
> items is an XML blob that we defined.
> 
> It kinda sucks, but that's at least simpler to handle (and harder to
> break in a way that makes the data structures inconsistent) than unique
> IDs or other similar hacks.

Yeah, the problems with string lists I know of are:
 
 - there is a race when you get/change/set in order to add something 
   to the list, where you can lose changes

 - it's a large block of data being sent out with every change
   notification

Probably neither one matters in practice, though you can imagine them
mattering if you have a network backend that might be slower and/or
updated by both users and admins at the same time.

Havoc