On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 03:19 +0200, Mario Torre wrote: > Hi! > > As part of an internal project we are developing, I'm writing a simple > backed to integrate GConf with java.util.prefs. > > The backend uses java-gnome (GConf and glib bindings), so I don't know > if it can be used as part of classpath. > > I would like to rewrite it to drop java-gnome dependencies, but it is > still useful in a number of situations (the most important one is to let > java applications on linux to use the preference api instead of GConf > when GConf is the only external requirement). > > Given the way that GConf handle preferences, there a couple of issues > that I'm currently investigating. > > For example, java.util.prefs defines system and user preferences, but > has no concept of application-only preferences. > > This means, for example, that the standard path to a GConf key for a > given application is "/apps/appname/key", while in java.util.prefs we > have always "/" as a starting point. > > More over, GConf keys are not limited to system and user (and system > here is more of: "user configs related to system application"). > > I'm trying to solve the issues about the root directory making a default > path of "/apps/appname", and only access "/" if a special environment > variable is set (most likely, many applications would not use that). > > The backend main class is finished, I'm writing few tests to check that > everything works right, plus I want to be sure that all the > functionality are in place. > > If you think that it can be integrated in classpath (it would be great), > we are ready to assign copyright to the classpath team to solve license > issues (we just need some hint to start this process). In any case, we > will release the sources under the same license of classpath (GPL + > exception) so that it can be easily integrated at any point if needed. > > I can send the sources as soon as I'm sure everything is right (at least > a couple of days). > > Please, let me know if you are interested Yes, this sounds great. We've wanted a GConf backend to java.util.prefs for a long time now. Introducing a requirement on GConf to GNU Classpath won't be a problem since we already require GTK for the AWT peers (and systems with GTK normally have GConf too). Just post the patch when it's ready and we'll take it from there. Tom
