xfconf GSettings backend

[Peter de Ridder]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Stephan Haller <nomad at froevel.de> wrote:
> Hi Nick,
> Hi Peter,
>
> thanks for feedback. Sorry, I didn't noticed that the roadmap contained a
> step to drop xfconf and use dconf instead although I understand the pros by
> this migration. It's also a sad step because I like xfconf ;) But at least I
> had a nice learning experience.
>

It was discussed before it is not the roadmap yet.
But this question is, why would you want a xfconf backend? to the end
application the backend shouldn't matter, right?

Regards,
Peter

> Regards,
> Stephan
>
> Am 03.03.2015 13:26, schrieb Peter de Ridder:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Nick Schermer <nick at xfce.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Technically [but a bitch for users] is to migrate xfconf data -> dconf
>>> and use the normal gsettings backend and drop xfconf.
>>>
>>> That said, the golden rule it to not break 2 things at the same time,
>>> so we might want to sit with xfconf during the gtk3 port. So the
>>> question is whether is useful to use gsettings to store settings in
>>> xfconf if we have to migrate anyway, some day...
>>>
>>> Nick
>>
>>
>> As nick said there is no real need for a xfconf backend, we can just use
>> dconf.
>>
>> Also, xfconf can do some things that gsettings can't and visa versa.
>> These should first be tackled to be able to make the switch.
>> Maning the most important one: gsettings can't have settings out side
>> of the gschema.
>> This is currently used for mouse and touchpad settings. The user can
>> even add extra settings where xfce4-mouse-settings doesn't know about.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Peter
>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 7:46 PM, Stephan Haller <nomad at froevel.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi @all,
>>>>
>>>> first of all I want to congratulate you for the Xfce 4.12 release and to
>>>> thank you for all your hard work to make this release happen. It's
>>>> great :)
>>>>
>>>> I spent the last hours of my coding time on another very small project
>>>> of mine because I needed a break of xfdashboard to revise the current
>>>> work I've done (started with multi-monitor support) and the roadmap.
>>>> This small project is called - I guess you know it already - xfconf
>>>> GSettings backend.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So far the project's progress is that it passes all tests of Glib 2.40
>>>> as defined at /gio/tests/gsettings.c in the sources and all stored
>>>> values are editable with xfconf's graphical editor
>>>> xfce4-settings-editor. But this backend is not really smart to get it
>>>> editable in the editor. It tries to find suitable GValue type for basic
>>>> GVariant types, e.g. booleans, integers, strings etc. and stores them in
>>>> xfconf with their native type. All other types like containers (e.g.
>>>> arrays) or more complex type (using maybe type etc.) are converted to
>>>> their GVariant's parsable string representation and then stored as
>>>> strings in xfconf. So they are still editable but you have to use the
>>>> GVariant textual value. Short said: They are serialized.
>>>>
>>>> This is for me just a proof-of-concept so the code is not well
>>>> structured yet and also error handling have to be improved. Also the
>>>> backend missed two functions (subscribe and unsubscribe) but I don't
>>>> know what they are used for. The documentation is not very complete
>>>> about the virtual function of a GSettings backend. But maybe it is still
>>>> worth a look and try. The Git repository is at
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/gmc-holle/xfconf-gsettings-backend
>>>>
>>>> Please let me know what you think about it and if it is ok for further
>>>> development or if it is better to drop it ;)
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Stephan
>>>>