On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, magenta wrote:
>
> User preferences are an entirely different matter. I totally agree that
> the user should be able to override default behaviors, but environment
> variables are such a crappy way of doing this.
Why? Environment variables are in many ways more powerful than config
files, and can be equally easily edited (think of your ".bashrc" as the
config file for environment variables).
I agree that using _bare_ environment variables is nasty, and nobody
should need to do
export GL_TEXTURE_DEPTH=32
by hand before starting a program. You clearly want to have the equivalent
of a .bashrc file that contains your defaults and that contains comments
about what the different settings do, but once you have that, environment
variables are actually very convenient because they allow you to make
truly local modifications. They are also often much more efficient and
easier to use than config files (ie "just say no to another config file
parser").
For an example of a well-done configuration option (in my opinion, your
milage may vary), look at QT_XFT usage in KDE/QT. You have a pretty
graphical interface for setting the option, but you can always override it
on a local basis too. Most users aren't even aware of it as a environment
variable.
Linus
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