[project-proposal] xfce4ring

[Robin Haswell]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> Robin Haswell wrote:
> 
> 
>>>From a user's point of view, I find that picking up my settings and
>>>taking them to a new computer is extremely tiresome, as there are too
>>>many folders to remember to zip up.
> 
> 
> $ tar cvjf xfce-config.tar.bz2 ~/.config/xfce4 ~/.cache/sessions \
>     ~/.config/xfce4-session/

Hm I was thinking more global future - a store for all apps that ship
with XFCE or otherwise. Currently I have to copy .bash*, .vim*, .ssh*,
.Eterm,  (fair enough), but also .gconf, .mozilla* .config, .cache and a
multitude of other directories, which is a bit lame.

> Was that so hard?  Put it in a script and you never have to remember it
> again.  Granted, that last directory is IMHO pretty lame.  (See
> http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1386)
> 
> 
>>>XFCE is also a PITA as it writes its
>>>current configuration on shutdown, so I can't copy my settings while
>>>XFCE is running. This isn't a biggie for me (I write all my code with
>>>vim), but it is annoying because I always forget to kill X beforehand,
> 
> 
> That's just plain incorrect.
> 
> All the MCS settings panels write their config when the dialog box is
> closed (any that don't should have a bug filed against them).
> 
> The panel saves its plugin setup within 10 seconds of adding or removing
> a plugin, and most (sane) plugins save their config immediately when
> it's changed (again, if not, file a bug against that plugin).
> 
> (Note that the 4.2.x panel does wait to write its settings, to avoid
> allowing a poorly-written panel plugin to crash the panel, and then not
> allow it to start again at all.  I think Jasper changed this in 4.2 as
> well to save the  panel layout some 10 seconds after adding a new
> plugin, though, so this is pretty much instantaneous for all reasonable
> purposes.)

Well I mainly do this with 4.2.x, so that would be the panel there (the
most obvious one that doesn't get the new config).

> Perhaps you're talking about the session manager saving the session?

No I never save sessions.

> Not much you can do about that.  Well, unless we had an
> xfce4-session-save command, but that's really a teeny tiny part of "xfce
> settings", so I fail to see how you could be so annoyed about that one
> tiny little thing.

Because tiny little things are the things that annoy users the most :-)

> I'm not entirely sure why you need to copy your settings around that
> often anyway.

I frequently install new machines - I use VMware to test new distros,
features in distros, etc. I also don't have much money so I end up
cobbling machines together from whatever I have around. I needed a
non-VM desktop linux a few weeks ago, so I installed Xubuntu in some
space I made by shuffling around my disks. In a few weeks I'll be
getting a laptop - another install. I also want to butcher together some
throwaways from my friends and relatives in a few weeks so I can have a
desktop linux machine at home that I can run alongside Windows so I
don't have to reboot every time I want to watch a movie in full screen,
or play a game.

>>>Anyway, back on-topic, a centralised location for storing everything
>>>would be great. But... wasn't that supposed to be gconf?
> 
> 
> If gconf weren't an utter mess, perhaps we'd use it.  Its dependencies
> are pretty ugly too (orbit being the most egregiously annoying of them).
>  Even the gnome folks want to ditch it when a suitable replacement comes
> around.

Hm I don't know what the problems with gconf are from a developer's POV,
but I think gconf is quite good. Settings get updated almost
immediately, it provides an alternative to configure apps so the gnome
guys can persist with their dialog-phobia. The schemas even allow people
to describe what keys do. And importantly, it's all XML so I mess up and
I can't load gconf-editor, I'm not stuck in the dark.

> 	-brian
>

-Rob
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