[xfconf] Implementing Schema's / using GSettings

[Mark Trompell]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Andrzej <ndrwrdck at googlemail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> I think you should plan features and changes to the framework with a future
> transition to GSettings in mind. That is:
>
> Phase 1: (In 4.10?) Modify xfconf to act (at the API level) as if schemas
> were available. At the backend level you can set up some additional channels
> for handling this information but this should be abstracted out from the
> applications. In particular, applications not using this API should behave
> as if there was no schema (any mismatches should be signaled as warnings).

That could probably done on an optional base first, so that whatever
program uses xfconf can provide a schema, but old ones still would
work. Or 'just' search git.xfce.org master branches for uses of xfconf
and create a schema per project from there. Don't know if anything not
if git.xfce.org uses xfconf.

> Phase 2: (In 4.12?) Modify xfconf to use dconf directly + prepare migration
> tools + allow applications use GSettings.

Well one of the cons of dconf is that it uses a binary format to store
settings, if one wants to avoid that the way to go would be writing a
xfconf backend for gsettings, so gsettings can use xfconf.
That way would make it possible to still use old programs (not yet
ported to gsettings).
Btw, maybe it would even make sense to add a dconf backend to xfconf
too and tweak xfconf so that it can use a default for read/write, but
can use another one as fallback for reading values, if a setting isn't
available from the default backend. That way you would have a way to
import settings from dconf storage to the xml storage xfce uses right
now (and vice versa). But unless someone provides a lot of time to me
dedicated to provide patches, this are just random thoughts to be
ignored :)

> Andrzej

Mark
-- 
Mark Trompell

Foresight Linux Xfce Edition
Cause your desktop should be freaking cool
(and Xfce)