linux registry (no, not that again!)

[Michael A. Peters]

On 11/03/2004 12:09:07 PM, D. Stolte wrote:
> Michael A. Peters wrote:
>> [mpeters at devel ~]$ ls -l /etc/kdb/system/init/1/ |head -5
>> total 12
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 23 Oct 23 05:27 action
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 35 Oct 23 05:27 process
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 20 Oct 23 05:27 runlevels
>> [mpeters at devel ~]$ cat /etc/kdb/system/init/1/action
>> RG002
>> 40
>> <DATA>
>> respawn
> thats just cryptic nonsense. i dont want such a config system on
> my box.

That's not cryptic nonsense - that was just demonstration of the  
layout.

[mpeters at devel ~]$ kdb ls system/sw/yum/current
system/sw/yum/current/base
system/sw/yum/current/development
system/sw/yum/current/main
system/sw/yum/current/updates-released
system/sw/yum/current/updates-testing
[mpeters at devel ~]$ kdb get system/sw/yum/current/base/baseurl
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/

Normally to view the value of a key - you use the kdb command and  
request the key - and it returns the value. No more criptic than  
grepping a text file, and easier in the case of yum because you can  
specify exactly which value you want (in this case baseurl associated  
with the base repo)

In reality, as is the case with gconf, most of the time a gui would do  
it for you - either in the application itself, or through a tool like  
gconf-editor. There is a qt tool for elektra now, and I suspect a  
generic gtk2 tool would be trivial to write (python).

Since a registry provides a standard API for writing/reading  
configuration data, configuration utilities become almost micky mouse  
to write - you don't have to learn the rules of all the different  
configuration types (# for comment, or // for comment, or tab  
deliminated key value pairs, or an xml scheme, or whatever).