7 ms·

It really is a mess and it would be helpful if we had some sort of database for configuration that was reasonably standardized. Some sort of "registry" if you

by luma 4y ago

It really is a mess and it would be helpful if we had some sort of database for configuration that was reasonably standardized. Some sort of "registry" if you will :D

overlisted 4y ago
GNOME has dconf[1], but it's only usable through D-Bus, which probably annoys the anti-systemd people [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dconf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dconf
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  It probably annoys most people who are accustomed to using their preferred text editor to configure their software, and it probably also annoys all the other users who are accustomed to using typical GUI preference windows accessed through the menus to change their configuration. Things like dconf and about:config exists in no man's land, where neither generic GUI skills nor generic unixy skills are applicable.
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    >and it probably also annoys all the other users who are accustomed to using typical GUI preference windows accessed through the menus to change their configuration How is this a problem with dconf? GNOME Settings for example is typical GUI preferences and works as a front-end to the dconf database.
    - enduser 4y ago
      It's not exactly a feature to have several layers of abstraction, when a text editor could suffice.
      - overlisted 4y ago
        Unix will never to achieve true user-friendliness and wide adoption if we treat settings like this. The reality is that most people need a graphical, hard to break way of changing their settings to use your software. Edit: Although I agree that some situations may require a readable text format, like a dotfiles repo. I personally use the `dconf-editor` program to find the right keys and the `dconf load` command to sync them from a regedit-like file format
        likeclockwork 4y ago
        Plenty of users find editing configs in a text editor very friendly. Changing away from that would be LESS friendly to those users. Which users are most important to be friendly to?
        stormking 4y ago
        The problem here are UI designers who adore Apple but cannot afford a Macbook. So they target the Linux desktop.
        kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        I find text configs very friendly up until the point that a package manager blows away my changes. This system harks from an era before fully automated software updates when a full time employed sysadmin was expected to manually oversee every single update. It's far easier to automate incremental changes to a binary database than to non-destructively modify a free form text file.
        pxc 4y ago
        > I find text configs very friendly up until the point that a package manager blows away my changes. Neither of these is a complete answer, but 1. Distros like NixOS and GuixSD address this successfully by emitting the config files themselves. They don't statefully edit your configs but instead store them in their own language and then translate them as wholes. 2. You can mitigate much of the pain of this with something like etckeeper, which essentially gives you version control for /etc.
      - Quekid5 4y ago
        That text file and your editor is two layers of abstraction (at least, because there's parsing involved, e.g. how to i specify timouts? sizes? Can I use "MiB", "s", "ms", etc?). The thing we want to optimize for is "how easy is to change a setting". Firefox's "about:" seems like a reasonable approach for expert users.
        nequo 4y ago
        But the abstraction that is the text editor is shared across many programs. You can use your favorite text editor to edit any of the plain-text configs that you need. Firefox’s about: and the way to edit it are specific to Firefox.
        Quekid5 4y ago
        Well, yes, but we were imagining a world with a sort of universal "about:", I think? You wouldn't even need that many basic types to cover about 90%+ of the state space. Of course, there would be bonus points if applications could define their own types in a UI-meaningful way.
        pessimizer 4y ago
        > how to i specify timouts? sizes? Can I use "MiB", "s", "ms", etc? These issues neither disappear nor improve when you hide the settings in a mystery binary.
        Quekid5 4y ago
        I agree, which is why I mentioned the "about:" thing. It would be nice to have a base level of types that all programs could agree on.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Last time I tried to use it, "GNOME Settings" (or whatever it was calling then) was woefully incomplete and I had to figure out that dconf-editor existed (which wasn't in the menus.) Same problem with Firefox; hamburger->settings will take you to a GUI that contains maybe 0.01% of all the settings Firefox actually has. You have to be "in the know" to know that about:config exists. I think the first time most firefox users find out about about:config is when they're angrily searching the web for a solution to their problems, which is basically how I discovered dconf-editor too. You don't find either of these by searching through the GUIs like a normal computer user, nor will you find them by poking around in your dotfiles like a seasoned console jockey.
      - sillystuff 4y ago
        And, once you have more than a trivial number of changes in about:config, you search for something that will allow you to have sane configuration management, and discover, the 'user.js' file. Any setting in about:config can be set in user.js and your user.js file can be diffed, grepped, version controlled, edited with your favorite editor, and copied between profiles/machines. Sadly, Mozilla is moving a lot of config out of about:config/user.js and into multiple random sqlite files, so sane config management is getting harder with each new release.
  - amarshall 4y ago
    Almost all of the things that get written to dconf settings are in some typical GUI preference window in whatever application. Firefox’s about:config can be somewhat controlled through a user.js file.
chasil 4y ago
...but preferably using the SQLite engine, and eschewing well-known proprietary formats. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32275078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32275078
- fezfight 4y ago
  Better yet, a flat file structure that you can grep with standard utilities. We can put it somewhere convenient, like in dot files in the users home directory. We can even add them to git with something simple like git add *.*
  - chasil 4y ago
    As tempting as that may be, the ability to enforce ANSI SQL constraints (not null, unique, check, foreign key, etc.) could prevent many types of configuration errors. If you want to grep everything in a sqlite database, then ".dump" it. $ echo "create table myconfig(param text, value text); insert into myconfig values('scrollbar', 'wide'); insert into myconfig values('verbose', 'no');" | sqlite3 myconfig.db $ sqlite3 myconfig.db '.dump myconfig' | grep verbose INSERT INTO "myconfig" VALUES('verbose','no');
    - fezfight 4y ago
      Good tips, thanks! I love sqlite3.
  - NavinF 4y ago
    Yes! Let's also make every config file is its own special snowflake with its own syntax, keywords, and escape characters. That way, it's much harder for software to interact with these files and humans will have to write config templates for each deployment. Oh and we might as well store these config file in a different place on each distro and move them around once in a while just to keep things interesting. Users can ignore upstream documentation and just strace the process if they wanna know where the files are this year.
    - deleted 4y ago
dainiusse 4y ago
IBM AIX has "sort of registry". There are some good things in AIX, but querying configurations is ugly as hell
grumple 4y ago
But it's really nice just being able to alter a regular text file for settings for whatever application you're dealing with.

by luma 4y ago

It really is a mess and it would be helpful if we had some sort of database for configuration that was reasonably standardized. Some sort of "registry" if you will :D

overlisted 4y ago

GNOME has dconf[1], but it's only usable through D-Bus, which probably annoys the anti-systemd people [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dconf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dconf

MichaelCollins 4y ago
It probably annoys most people who are accustomed to using their preferred text editor to configure their software, and it probably also annoys all the other users who are accustomed to using typical GUI preference windows accessed through the menus to change their configuration. Things like dconf and about:config exists in no man's land, where neither generic GUI skills nor generic unixy skills are applicable.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >and it probably also annoys all the other users who are accustomed to using typical GUI preference windows accessed through the menus to change their configuration How is this a problem with dconf? GNOME Settings for example is typical GUI preferences and works as a front-end to the dconf database.
  - enduser 4y ago
    It's not exactly a feature to have several layers of abstraction, when a text editor could suffice.
    - overlisted 4y ago
      Unix will never to achieve true user-friendliness and wide adoption if we treat settings like this. The reality is that most people need a graphical, hard to break way of changing their settings to use your software. Edit: Although I agree that some situations may require a readable text format, like a dotfiles repo. I personally use the `dconf-editor` program to find the right keys and the `dconf load` command to sync them from a regedit-like file format
      - likeclockwork 4y ago
        Plenty of users find editing configs in a text editor very friendly. Changing away from that would be LESS friendly to those users. Which users are most important to be friendly to?
        stormking 4y ago
        The problem here are UI designers who adore Apple but cannot afford a Macbook. So they target the Linux desktop.
        kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        I find text configs very friendly up until the point that a package manager blows away my changes. This system harks from an era before fully automated software updates when a full time employed sysadmin was expected to manually oversee every single update. It's far easier to automate incremental changes to a binary database than to non-destructively modify a free form text file.
        pxc 4y ago
        > I find text configs very friendly up until the point that a package manager blows away my changes. Neither of these is a complete answer, but 1. Distros like NixOS and GuixSD address this successfully by emitting the config files themselves. They don't statefully edit your configs but instead store them in their own language and then translate them as wholes. 2. You can mitigate much of the pain of this with something like etckeeper, which essentially gives you version control for /etc.
    - Quekid5 4y ago
      That text file and your editor is two layers of abstraction (at least, because there's parsing involved, e.g. how to i specify timouts? sizes? Can I use "MiB", "s", "ms", etc?). The thing we want to optimize for is "how easy is to change a setting". Firefox's "about:" seems like a reasonable approach for expert users.
      - nequo 4y ago
        But the abstraction that is the text editor is shared across many programs. You can use your favorite text editor to edit any of the plain-text configs that you need. Firefox’s about: and the way to edit it are specific to Firefox.
        Quekid5 4y ago
        Well, yes, but we were imagining a world with a sort of universal "about:", I think? You wouldn't even need that many basic types to cover about 90%+ of the state space. Of course, there would be bonus points if applications could define their own types in a UI-meaningful way.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        > how to i specify timouts? sizes? Can I use "MiB", "s", "ms", etc? These issues neither disappear nor improve when you hide the settings in a mystery binary.
        Quekid5 4y ago
        I agree, which is why I mentioned the "about:" thing. It would be nice to have a base level of types that all programs could agree on.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Last time I tried to use it, "GNOME Settings" (or whatever it was calling then) was woefully incomplete and I had to figure out that dconf-editor existed (which wasn't in the menus.) Same problem with Firefox; hamburger->settings will take you to a GUI that contains maybe 0.01% of all the settings Firefox actually has. You have to be "in the know" to know that about:config exists. I think the first time most firefox users find out about about:config is when they're angrily searching the web for a solution to their problems, which is basically how I discovered dconf-editor too. You don't find either of these by searching through the GUIs like a normal computer user, nor will you find them by poking around in your dotfiles like a seasoned console jockey.
    - sillystuff 4y ago
      And, once you have more than a trivial number of changes in about:config, you search for something that will allow you to have sane configuration management, and discover, the 'user.js' file. Any setting in about:config can be set in user.js and your user.js file can be diffed, grepped, version controlled, edited with your favorite editor, and copied between profiles/machines. Sadly, Mozilla is moving a lot of config out of about:config/user.js and into multiple random sqlite files, so sane config management is getting harder with each new release.
- amarshall 4y ago
  Almost all of the things that get written to dconf settings are in some typical GUI preference window in whatever application. Firefox’s about:config can be somewhat controlled through a user.js file.

chasil 4y ago

...but preferably using the SQLite engine, and eschewing well-known proprietary formats. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32275078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32275078

fezfight 4y ago
Better yet, a flat file structure that you can grep with standard utilities. We can put it somewhere convenient, like in dot files in the users home directory. We can even add them to git with something simple like git add *.*
- chasil 4y ago
  As tempting as that may be, the ability to enforce ANSI SQL constraints (not null, unique, check, foreign key, etc.) could prevent many types of configuration errors. If you want to grep everything in a sqlite database, then ".dump" it. $ echo "create table myconfig(param text, value text); insert into myconfig values('scrollbar', 'wide'); insert into myconfig values('verbose', 'no');" | sqlite3 myconfig.db $ sqlite3 myconfig.db '.dump myconfig' | grep verbose INSERT INTO "myconfig" VALUES('verbose','no');
  - fezfight 4y ago
    Good tips, thanks! I love sqlite3.
- NavinF 4y ago
  Yes! Let's also make every config file is its own special snowflake with its own syntax, keywords, and escape characters. That way, it's much harder for software to interact with these files and humans will have to write config templates for each deployment. Oh and we might as well store these config file in a different place on each distro and move them around once in a while just to keep things interesting. Users can ignore upstream documentation and just strace the process if they wanna know where the files are this year.
  - deleted 4y ago

dainiusse 4y ago

IBM AIX has "sort of registry". There are some good things in AIX, but querying configurations is ugly as hell

grumple 4y ago

But it's really nice just being able to alter a regular text file for settings for whatever application you're dealing with.