[Mono-dev] System.Configuration 2.0 ApplicationSettings infrastructure.

[Gareth Pearce]

Hi,

In the process of porting my little freeware puzzle game to mono, I've 
found that the .Net 2.0 ApplicationSettings infrastructure is currently 
quite incomplete. I've got one patch in bugzilla so that it at least 
doesn't crash under normal use, but even with that, 
LocalFileSettingsProvider is just a stub, it doesn't actually perform 
any persistence.

I was considering fixing it all up so it worked nicely.  But wanted to 
a) check no one was already working in the area and b) check some design 
questions.

The .Net documentation on the location of the user scoped settings file 
used by local file settings provider appears incorrect.  It states that 
user scoped settings files are found in User directory/Local 
Settings/Application Data/Company Name/Product Name/Version Number
but in reality the product name is replaced with the <executable 
name>_Url_<hash of file location url or something >.
I am wondering whether I should be aiming to match the hash so that the 
same program run under mono vs being run under .net will still find the 
same settings files.  It would seem like a difficult job without having 
access to the actual .net class library disassembly. The hash looks like 
base 32 encoding - 26 lower case letters and 6 digits - 32 characters 
gives 160bits, maybe SHA-1?  But still the question is of what.

And finally, if I get this all done soon would it be likely to go in 
before the 1.2 release?  I'm hoping that Linux and Mac OS-X users can 
start using my puzzle game once mono 1.2 goes out and it would be good 
if their settings actually saved.

--Gareth