Re:In defense of Unix
by hasenj on Saturday March 05, 2016 @07:20AM
(#11229283)
My guess is that GUI tools often clobber configuration files once they touch them, because it's easier to write code that stores configuration as a hashmap and when it saves it back, the output is not going to preserve things like, user comments, the order of things, etc.
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Re:In defense of Unix
by jimktrains2 on Saturday March 05, 2016 @07:57AM
(#11229356)
Is it really though? And why are we just calling out GUI tools? Command line tools also must read in a config file, and they manage with text. json, ini, yaml, xml parses and writers exist in every language. There really isn't an excuse to not use a text-based config.
If the Windows registry + INI files + config files anyway is the alternative, I'll take the text files please.
I think command line tools (like say, git-config) manage one option at a time.
GUI tools tend to manage everything at once. Imagine the giant options box from MS Word 2003.
Re:In defense of Unix
by jimktrains2 on Monday March 07, 2016 @09:51AM
(#11239171)
It still has to read in the current config, mutate it, and write it out.