libmcs
A library and set of userland tools which abstract the storage of configuration settings away from userland applications.
Note: mcs has been deprecated by GSettings. Do not use it in newly written code.
It is hoped that by using mcs, that the applications which use it
will generally have a more congruent feeling in regards to settings.
There have been other projects like this before (such as GConf), but unlike those projects, mcs strictly handles abstraction. It does not impose any specific data storage requirement, nor is it tied to any desktop environment or software suite.
Because mcs is licenced under the BSD license, it is hoped that many applications will adopt it's use.
Available Storage Backends
The default storage backend (unless a different one is set in your environment), is one which stores freedesktop.org keyfile standard compliant files in accordance to the freedesktop XDG specification.
Additionally, a GConf storage backend is available for users who would prefer to use that instead.
To temporarily change the selected storage backend, simply export the MCS_BACKEND environment variable, and mcs will handle the rest automatically.
You can also change the backend that mcs uses permanantly, in both the scope of a user account, and the default site-wide setting used.
To set a different backend for a user account, simply run:
$ echo "gconf" > $HOME/.mcs-backend
This will set the storage backend to gconf for the local user.
To set a different default backend, you can do the same, but the filepath should be /etc/mcs-backend, or whatever your system configuration directory is, if it is not /etc.
The selected backend can be verified by using the mcs-info(1) utility.
Installation is fairly typical:
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
(If sudo isn't on your system, su to root.)
Download the current development branch (requires Git):
$ git clone git://git.atheme.org/libmcs.git
There have been other projects like this before (such as GConf), but unlike those projects, mcs strictly handles abstraction. It does not impose any specific data storage requirement, nor is it tied to any desktop environment or software suite.
Because mcs is licenced under the BSD license, it is hoped that many applications will adopt it's use.
Available Storage Backends
The default storage backend (unless a different one is set in your environment), is one which stores freedesktop.org keyfile standard compliant files in accordance to the freedesktop XDG specification.
Additionally, a GConf storage backend is available for users who would prefer to use that instead.
To temporarily change the selected storage backend, simply export the MCS_BACKEND environment variable, and mcs will handle the rest automatically.
You can also change the backend that mcs uses permanantly, in both the scope of a user account, and the default site-wide setting used.
To set a different backend for a user account, simply run:
$ echo "gconf" > $HOME/.mcs-backend
This will set the storage backend to gconf for the local user.
To set a different default backend, you can do the same, but the filepath should be /etc/mcs-backend, or whatever your system configuration directory is, if it is not /etc.
The selected backend can be verified by using the mcs-info(1) utility.
Installation is fairly typical:
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
(If sudo isn't on your system, su to root.)
Download the current development branch (requires Git):
$ git clone git://git.atheme.org/libmcs.git
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