[Gtk-sharp-list] About GConf and Mono

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> I was thinking today about GConf and Gtk#. GConf is difficult to use
> in these respects:
> 
> * You have to create a GConf schema (learn how to make one)
> * you have to run gconf-schemagen over it
> * it is tricky to store custom types on it
> * finally you have to have root priviledges to install the schema
>
> I am thinking on removing GConf use on my project because of these
> reasons. You can tell whatever you like of the Windows registry, but
> it certainly is MUCH easier to use.
> 
> Besides, I don't  want to be obligated to have administrator
> priviledges to install my app anywhere. That is not the .NET way to
> deploy applications. If you don't have global libraries to install,
> why should you be obligated to be admin for anything?
> 
> What do you think about it?

I am no fan of GConf personally, but I think some of the ideas are
interesting.  Although GConf has a nice notification system that helps
keeping all the settings in synchrony across applications, and provides
a unified place to store those values, I am not sure that every
application needs to use it.

If you only want to store a few per-user settings, you could as well
store them in ~/.etc/yourapplication/settings.xml or something like that
(I would like to encourage people to use ~/.etc/yourapplication for
storing their application data as opposed to ~/.yourapplication).

Miguel.