On 4 Jul 2001, sandy pond wrote: > Date: 4 Jul 2001 00:52:43 -0700 > From: sandy pond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: (REPOST) user-specific package configuration information > Resent-Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 09:53:18 +0200 > Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Hi Luigi, > > > >(3) Often, dot files are shared between > > > multiple packages. Examples include .newsrc, .mime.types, and so on. > > > > > mainly the third point is really strong, even more than the second. > > Modern sysetm will have more and more applications, exspecially isf > > they are used interactivelly by users, and if every application has > > to have its own .<config file> inside of the users home, and there is no > > way to share the most of them, it's going to be > > very difficoult and disordered situation for sysadmins and users too > > > > I think your point is well taken. But I also think > that future integrated programs that need to share > lots of configuration information will provide > their own mechanism. The GNOME GConf is > an example of this movement and also goes to > highlight the inadequacy of the present scheme. > Anyway, you will EVEN have to deal with traditional Unix Application, and the tradizional way they do things.
For example, do not pretend emacs to change its $HOME/.emacs, because it is working this way on EVERY Unix, and there no reason why it should behave differently with Linux. But this is not a strong point, since emacs is one application. Just thonk to all news readers using .newsrc. Future integrated programs are just a part of the Unix world. Thanx God unix is unix almost everywhere, and ls is ls since decades. So I am not thinking new applications are going to replace so easilly the good working traditional ones. > However, aside from this, I believe that Ted's 3rd > point can easily be worked around with several > possible alternative, provided of course, there is > adequate interest in curing the present (and still > growing) mess. For information purposes, my > home directory currently contains 39 file and > directory entries for user-specific configuration > information and is growing daily. > Which kind of alternatives are you thinking to? bests Luigi Genoni
