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Almost as funny as "You write a distributed map-reduce function in Erlang!". I think people are reacting out of bad experiences with other binary file configur
by thyrsus 16y ago
Almost as funny as "You write a distributed map-reduce function in Erlang!".
I think people are reacting out of bad experiences with other binary file configuration systems. Examples: windows registry; Solaris as LDAP client (ok, so the stored files might be text today, but the documentation disavows their format and declares the command line is the One True Interface); Solaris smf (again, text files underneath, but the documentation deprecates their format); Gnome configuration (I'd be grateful if someone could point to useful documentation there, or some kind of road map).
- bad_user 16y agoFunny you mention GConf, since its storage engine is based on text configuration files that you can edit by yourself (not binary and in fact those text files are even human readable). I mean, I'm a power user and I like Apache's configuration format, but there was a steep learning curve involved, and for a production server that's super-duper fine, but for normal users it is super painful to deal with different syntaxes / conventions / locations for every god damn application you're using. GConf sucks, but the alternatives are worse. Also, the technical problems of Windows Registry have more to do with it being a half-arsed implementation of a filesystem, not to mention inappropriate use of it (many apps using it as a database).
- nailer 16y agoWhat sucks about gconf? I like it for precisely the reasons you describe: I can use vi, the command line, or a GUI app just as effectively.