[Kde-pim] configuration in akonadi-next

[Ingo Klöcker]

I'm reluctant to warm up this old thread, but so far you didn't give any good 
arguments for not using text files for configuration. OTOH, we listed several 
arguments in favor of text files.

On Friday 19 December 2014 19:58:05 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Friday, December 19, 2014 19.19:13 you wrote:
> > If I need to connect to ssh to a machine to look at config I don't have
> > necessary a X to see config.
> 
> I wasn't suggesting relying on Dr. Konqi. I was making the point that helper
> tools are not "evil", but can actually be very helpful indeed, for both the
> end user and the developer who has to deal with their reports.

Yes. Sometimes something like kreadconfig and kwriteconfig is nice, but often 
it's not sufficient.


> Even with Kontact and Akonadi's configuration in text format, it still
> absolutely sucks for trying to find the right config data. Having a command
> line tool that automates that for people would be lovely.

You mean like our lovely kreadconfig and kwriteconfig? They work nicely for 
KDE's (text) config files, don't they?

But they do not work at all for Akonadi's configuration files (even though 
those use exactly the same syntax as KDE's configuration files).

And, IMO, this proves a strong point against any specialized tools, the point 
being that for configuration stored in text files one doesn't need a 
specialized tool. Any text editor works fine for any configuration file in 
/etc.

Of course, it's nice to have a special end-user configuration tool, but that 
doesn't mean everybody has to use this tool.


> It isn't enough to just say "they are text files, text files are good,
> therefore we are in a good place". It just isn't so.

And I say "It is so.". ;-)

For binary-format config files you always need a special tool. For text-format 
config files you do not necessarily need a special tool. In my book, that's 
_the_ argument for text and against binary config files.


Regards,
Ingo
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