Re: config system thoughts

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On 21 Jul 1999, Kenneth MacDonald wrote:
> There are three types of config value to be considered here.
> 
> 1) Default value,
> 2) Mandatory value,
> 3) User value.
> 
> Havoc seems to be thinking the read only value early in the path is a
> mandatory one, and Elliot assumes it's a default.  They're not the
> same, and the API Havoc's describing doesn't seem to allow for default
> values.
> 

The mandatory value would be a read-only system value in the front of the
path, and the default value would be a read-only system value behind user
config sources in the path. 

So, your path might be:

/etc/gnome-mandatory:~/.gnome:/etc/gnome-defaults

The simple rule is that values found earlier in the path are always used,
and so a read-only value at the front of the path is mandatory, and one
later in the path is a default.

Mandatory values won't be secure I don't think, it's just to prevent user
error. An enterprising user could manually fool around with their Gnome
libraries to change the search path.

Havoc