Re: My vision of gnome-libs (was Re: GNOME 2.0 meeting summary)

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On 16 Feb 2001 11:30:51 -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> writes: 
> > one of the most important, IMO, compatibility layer that should be
> > provided is the gnome_config stuff,
> > which, AFAIK, is being used everywhere. GConf API and gnome_config are
> > almost identical, with few exceptions, and a mapping between them should
> > be very easy to do (in fact, I did this once for gnome-db when we were
> > supporting both gnome_config and GConf, and it was really easy to do).
> > New stuff in GConf, such as notifications, won't be a problem since this
> > is not used in gnome_config-based apps.
> > 
> > And this could remain for ever in gnome-libs, as it's more a wrapper
> > than a compatibility layer.
> 
> This is a mistake - if you just "use GConf behind gnome_config" you
> don't gain anything, because you aren't using any GConf features, and
> you create instability and break e.g. desktop file parsing.
> 
sorry, I didn't finish my explanation: after the compatibility layer, you can

add wrappers to the extra functions in GConf, and thus all gnome_config
apps remain binary compatible, and at the same time they've got access
to GConf's full potential through the gnome_config API, if they want to.
It will make more sense to some people to use gnome_config_* and
gconf_*. And also, you won't have to tell all developers using
gnome_config right now to upgrade to GConf, you just tell them that the
gnome_config API has been extended

About breaking desktop file parsing, I think that's another issue: that
stuff should be moved, IMO, to glib

cheers