NAME

       md_doc_help_elektra-relatedelektra-related -- related configuration systems
        - Settings and preferences are ubiquitous in every software. For this reason, a vast
       amount of software has emerged on this topic. Most of the other projects, however, do not
       devote their work exclusively to configuration.

       We have already mentioned that Elektra provides the features of a configuration library.
       There are countless libraries out there that parse and some even generate configuration
       files. But there is a big catch: These libraries do not provide an abstract view of
       configuration. They require programmers to open the files themselves or at least to
       remember the path to them. Such information is itself configuration and inherently
       operating system dependent. Therefore, it is not possible to give default values that just
       work.

       Another feature mostly missing in these libraries is cascading. It is not difficult to
       implement, but disturbing if it is not available at all or does not work correctly.

   Augeas
       Augeas is not intended for applications themselves, so it only creates a new view to
       configuration files which is not necessarily the same as applications see it.
       Additionally, Augeas has a rather poor level of abstraction and many syntactical details
       must be reflected in the configuration tree. Nevertheless, Elektra provides an
       doc_help_augeas plugin '/src/plugins/augeas/' which allows parts of Elektra's global
       configuration tree to be implemented using lenses. Lenses are a promising technology,
       which allow mapping from and to configuration files to be specified with a single program.

   Uniconf
       A project that shares some of the goals with Elektra, but uses a different approach is
       Uniconf. Besides a stand-alone library it supports a daemon mode. With the daemon running,
       it has the disadvantage of protocol overhead and a single point of failure. On the other
       hand, Uniconf can also notify applications when configuration files change and can work in
       a distributed mode. The project does not solve the problem of how to configure the
       configuration system. So we still have to pass a so-called moniker string that contains
       the knowledge where to find the configuration. The plugin system is flexible, but does not
       depend on the key name. So it is not possible to use different plugins for different
       applications and still have a global key database.

   Debconf
       Debconf is a set of Debian-tools that separates user interaction from the configuration
       process for the system's configuration when packages are installed or upgraded. Debconf
       itself does not change the configuration files. Instead, the administrator is asked
       questions depending on template files using different front ends. These answers are then
       cached. The configuration changes themselves are applied by post-install scripts of the
       particular package. Exactly for this last step Elektra could yield much better results,
       because it can compare configuration on a per-key basis and thus handle conflicts in a
       much more fine-grained way.

   Freedesktop.org
       The freedesktop.org initiative unifies different desktops using the X Window System in
       various ways. The main focus, however, lies in KDE and Gnome integration. One of the most
       disturbing and still unresolved problems is configuration. Elektra intends to fill this
       gap in the future.

       Already available is the so-called XDG Base Directory Specification. Perhaps it will
       define file formats in the future, but currently only the paths are specified. To do so,
       it introduces some environment variables that help to find the actual configuration. Only
       if they are unset or empty, a built-in fallback should be used. If desired, elektrified
       applications behave in a XDG conforming way. (See the configuration x for the resolver).