On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 9:16 PM, Adam Williamson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, all. I only just signed up for the list but most of you probably > know me from IRC, I'm the guy packaging synce for Mandriva. > > I realized today that synce's handling of its configuration file is > pretty bad. Quick overview of how it's handled at present: > > synce installs a default configuration file to /usr somewhere. This copy > of the file is never actually used in operation. It's just used for the > next bit... > > When you run sync-engine, it checks if ~/.synce/config.xml exists. If it > doesn't, it copies the default configuration file from /usr to > ~/.synce/config.xml . > > The default file is 'active' - that is, it actually sets all the values > it contains, they're not commented out by default. > > This is fairly crack-addled in many ways. Easy to illustrate with a > single value from the file: > > <OpensyncXMLFormat>OS20</OpensyncXMLFormat> > > okay, so we're defaulting to opensync 0.2 format. Great, that's > perfectly sensible right now. But it won't be forever. Some day, > opensync 0.3 / 0.4 will be stable, and we'll want to default to OS30 / > OS40 / whatever it's called by then. > > How do we that? > > Well, we...er...can't, for existing users. Everyone who's already using > synce will have a ~/.synce/config.xml . We can't make synce's > installation routine edit that file, that'd just be horrible. So anyone > who's already used synce is basically stuck with all the default > configuration values that happened to exist whenever they first > installed synce. Forever. Even if those defaults stop making sense in > future. Even if they never actively set any of those values. > > This is how it should be done: > > The default config file should install in /etc somewhere, and if it > exists, sync-engine should take it into account when running. It should > *not* actually be 'active' by default: it should list all the default > settings, but they should be commented out. All the defaults should be > written into synce itself. > > Whether we create ~/.synce/config.xml by default or not is essentially a > moot point. We may as well, because it aids discoverability, but even if > we don't, everything would work. (As a corollary, sync-engine should not > fail to run if no user configuration file exists and it can't copy the > original from /usr for some reason - that's just crack. It should go > ahead and run, but print a warning). If we do, it should obviously be > the same as the copy in /etc : it should not actually set any values at > all by default. > > This would work far better. Now if we want to change a default value in > a new version of synce, it's no problem: just change it in synce's code, > and change the commented-out default in the copy of config.xml that > installs to /etc . Anyone who didn't choose to change any default values > themselves will get the new default automatically. > > It's also far better for distribution packagers, like me. The current > situation gives us absolutely no way to set distro-specific defaults. > There *must* be a system-wide configuration file, which has priority > over the written-in defaults, but itself is overridden by the user's own > config file, if it exists. This is the only sane way for distributors, > as packages can touch system-wide configuration files but cannot touch > files in a user's home directory. > > Thanks for reading, hope this can be changed soon :) > -- > adamw
Fully agree, +1. Though in the OpenSync 0.3 vs OpenSync 0.2 - i would prefer if the opensync plugin asked for a specific version over dbus rather than the user having to manually set anything. John ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ SynCE-Devel mailing list SynCE-Devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/synce-devel
