On 28/10/2012 09:41 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Snort.. Actually, the problem with the windows registry are:
>
> 1. Can't read the damn thing, without the editor.

Well, see, the idea is that *you* should never have to look at it. The 
program in question is supposed to provide a real UI for editing it. 
Much like you should never have to look at a JPEG file in a hex editor; 
you should use a real image viewer / editor.

> 2. Things don't always uninstall cleanly.

Gsettings might plausibly do this better. It looks like you just delete 
that program's XML file and then recompile the schemas... but I haven't 
tested this.

Under Windows, any program can just add or delete arbitrary keys.

> 3. There are no safeguards to stop program X from screwing with a key
> for program Y.
>
> This might require some sort of, "mark this key as editable", or
> something, since there may be a few cases where you do want to allow
> this, for specific things.

You realise that the Windows registry has ACLs, right? Exactly like 
files do? I'm not sure whether Gsettings does this, come to think of 
it... I suspect not. (After all, Unix doesn't have ACLs for files yet.)

> 4. It doesn't clean itself up.

That's really more a problem with crappy software than with the registry 
itself. It's like, very commonly you uninstall some program, and then 
months later realise that some of its files are still sitting on your 
harddrive. Is that a problem with filesystems? No, not really; it's a 
problem with badly written installers and uninstallers.

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