Re: Module proposal: dconf [migration from gconf]

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2009-10-23 at 10:53 +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le jeudi 22 octobre 2009 à 14:48 +0200, Alexander Larsson a écrit : 

> > So, I say, leave old apps using gconf alone, and leave the gconf storage
> > alone too. It works (to some degree) and will continue to work (to the
> > same degree) in the future with minimal maintainance.
> 
> That means keeping on maintaining GConf for quite a long time. For the
> record, it took us around 8 years to get rid of GTK+ 1.2. GConf is not
> as widespread, but it is already ~600 packages. From the moment
> GSettings is widely deployed, I’d expect at least 3-4 years before being
> able to not install it by default on Linux systems; in the meantime,
> this means starting both daemons in user serssions. And 5-6 years before
> being able to get completely rid of it.

It would only need to be installed if some app you install requires it,
and it would only run in the session if some app actually runs that uses
it. (Assuming we patch it to exit if the last client connected to it
exits, which I'm not sure happens today.)

> This plan is clearly less work right now, but it means more maintenance
> work in the long term.

How can you be sure of that? Any other plan involves first writing and
debugging a new set of software to support the gconf api on something
else, then maintaining it for as long as we would have to maintain
gconf, and this being new software it is likely going to be more work to
maintain.