(Sorry for the delayed response)
The OpenOffice presentation hiveconf.sxi describes some of this.
I just had a chance to look at that. That does explain things quite well.
I converted it to PDF, which I think will encourage more people to read it. See attached.
Thanks, I've added it to CVS.
Yeah I saw that after I emailed you.
Making Samba use the Hiveconf API would be difficult right now, since there is not C library yet.
Yes I understand. I was dreaming a little.
Did you see the part in unix-config.html where I talk about specifying the configuration file all in one place? I.e. a developer would list the configurable options, types, help text, defaults, etc. all in one place.
Yes, this would be a nice option. I think this can be done with hiveconf by using the meta-data feature (not implemented yet, though :-).
Then some scripts provided by hiveconf would parse it out into various sensible places, including hconf file spec & metadata, HTML docs, man page extracts, template config files, template code for the app to read in the config values, etc.
Exactly.
A big challenge in encouraging adoption of a standard config system is to get developers to use it. So if there are major cool things for the developer then it's a big motivation. Once those things are in place, and you have a critical mass of developers, the other stuff like GUI editors (for developers and other ones for users) will follow.
Users want the features provided by hiveconf, but it is developers who must implement them by using a library like hiveconf when they start developing, or converting their existing code to be able to use it. So I think your main marketing challenge is to developers, not to users. You might gain a lot by looking at existing project's source code to see how they do config, and how to make it as easy as possible for them to convert their config handling code to hiveconf. (Maybe you already did this.)
Good points. I think the next step would be a C-linkable shared library, and some enhancements to the Python implementation.
Gconf and the windows registry do target themselves at developers, and they have had a lot of success. But neither addresses all the things a Unix configuration system needs in order to be adopted by the diverse free software and open source community.
Maybe you have thought about all this, but I didn't see it in your notes so far.
I haven't thought much about it, but I think you are right.