Registries was (Re: [ILUG] Some more Questions : )

[John P. Looney]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2000 at 05:45:51AM -0600, John_White at dell.com mentioned:
> <snip>
> > Why do you need to do this, out of interest?
> yeah, . . . why? 
> 
> When trying to apply Windows concepts to UNIX which will just make it
> frustrating for yourself, embrace it's difference, treat it like a new
> fruit, don't constrain it within the bounds of something familliar - you
> lose something of it's richness. 
> ("You must unlearn what you have learnt" - Master Yoda)

 The idea of a registry is good. A single API for all apps to store their
stuff in. The Microsoft implementation wasn't too bad. It has it's
problems, but overall, it's functional.

 It's the stupid programmers that abuse a registry that affect system
performance and stability. The outlook people thought it would be cunning
to store the calendar & mail addresses in it. The driver people thought it
would be cunning to store device settings in it. 

 Gnome people thought it would be cunning to store data in a registry.
Gnome-Pilot stores stuff like the addressbook details in it - as in, "The
addressbook file is in xxxx". Big difference.

> Hey why don't we keep the entire sytsem configuration in a centralised
> database that's loaded in memory all the time ? . . .
> That way, it'll use up memory, and give the user nothing in return. Also,
> the more software someone installs, the more memory it will take up, and the
> slower their system will run ! ! ! !

 Do remember that it's swapped out when not in use...

> And when someone wants to copy an application from one system to
> another, they'll have to search all sorts of places in the registry to
> find other bits & components of the app.

 You can export branches of a registry out, just like you can tar up the
filesystem. It's just not easy to do :)

 If it was a common requirement, in an ideal world, applications would
have a "purge registry entries" menu thing, and a "export registry
settings" menu thing. They don't. With GNOME's registry, you can do "cp
-rd ~/.gnome/appname ~otheraccount/.gnome/appname - something I'd to do
yesterday, when copying settings from my home account to this one.

 If anyone is doing anything, and thinks "I'd like a registry", checkout
out ACAP. It's supposed to be a "network registry". That would rock. If
all the linux apps you know any love become registry aware...esp. Vim, so
I could edit the registry with a text editor :)

Kate

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