Plugin: xfconf

• infos = Information about the xfconf plugin is in keys below
• infos/author = Richard Stöckl e1190.nosp@m.8080.nosp@m.@stud.nosp@m.ent..nosp@m.tuwie.nosp@m.n.ac.nosp@m..at
• infos/licence = BSD
• infos/needs =
• infos/provides = storage/xml
• infos/recommends =
• infos/placements = getstorage setstorage
• infos/status = maintained unittest libc configurable memleak experimental limited unfinished concept
• infos/metadata =
• infos/description = storage plugin for xfconf

Introduction

The xfconf plugin is a storage plugin to mount the xfconf configuration settings. This allows to operate on the XFCE configuration with libelektra. As usual, this allows the plugin to read and write to the XFCE configuration.

For further understanding how xfconf is structured, please refer to the Xfconf binding.

The list of all channels is stored in the system:/elektra/modules/xfconf/channels which is an array of all channel names. Channels cannot be created manually with libelektra. Instead, when mounting a channel (see Plugin Configuration how to specify a channel) and setting a key value below the mount, it will be automatically created.

You may also refer to the official XFCE documentation of xfconf to learn more about it.

Dependencies

The xfconf library from the XFCE project is the main dependency of this plugin. Usually, this library is called something such as xfconf (Arch, Fedora, xfconf-devel for compiling), libxfconf-0 (Debian, libxfconf-0-dev for compmiling) or xfce4-conf (FreeBSD) in the package manager. As xfconf itself depends on dbus and glib, these are dependecies too but should be installed with the package manager automatically. This plugin is tested with the xfconf versions 4.16 and above.

Before you can start working with the plugin, you have to make sure dbus is running. If you use a common desktop environment this should already be fulfilled. Otherwise, export $(dbus-launch) can be used to start it. You may also need to use systemd-machine-id-setup to create /etc/machine-id.

Note that this plugin does not support macOS since Xfce is not commonly used there, Mac Ports only provides a very old version (4.12) and Brew does not provide Xfce at all.

Usage

The usage is identical to most storage plugins except that the channel option during mount must be defined in order to tell xfconf which channel to mount.

Plugin Configuration

The required channel configuration option is used to tell xfconf which channel to mount.

Examples

# Backup-and-Restore: user:/tests/xfconf
 
# mount the xfwm channel
kdb mount -R noresolver none /test/xfwm xfconf "channel=xfwm4"
 
# store old button layout
set "OLD_LAYOUT=$(kdb get /test/xfwm/general/button_layout)"
 
# set only a close button
kdb set system:/test/xfwm/general/button_layout "C|"
 
# read the new layout
kdb get /test/xfwm/general/button_layout
#> C|
 
# restore old layout
kdb set /test/xfwm/general/button_layout "$OLD_LAYOUT"
 
# umount the channel
kdb umount /test/xfwm

Locks

Xfconf uses so-called locks to prevent users or applications to set properties to a new value. They can be referred as a type of constant. As of now, locks cannot be set or unset in xfconf which makes locked properties read-only forever.

Limitations

• xfconf locks can only be read but not set as this is not possible in xfconf
• comments and sorting are not implemented due the lack of both in xfconf
• due to memory leaks in xfconf upstream, valgrind reports errors when running the tests