Please KDE, make your config syncable!
This article is a cry for a feature which is long overdue in KDE, in my humble opinion: Syncable, user readable (as in plain-text) configuration files.
But let me start explaining where I come from.
I started with Linux when I was 17 years old. At the time I ran an Kubuntu 9.04 (if I remember correctly) with KDE 3. I disliked Gnome because it looked silly to me (no offense, Gnome or Gnome people). So it was simply aesthetics which made me use KDE. Before switching to Linux I had only experienced the cruel world of Microsoft Windows, XP at the time. When I got a new Notebook for my Birthday, I got Vista and two days later I had this Linux thing installed (which friends of mine kept talking about). Naturally, I was blown away by it.
After some time I got rather comfortable using this black box with the green
text on it – the terminal finally had me!
Soon, I launched a full blown KDE 3 (themed hackerlike in dark colors) to
start a few terminals, open vim and hack away. Then, the same friend who
suggested Linux told me about “tiling window managers”. wmii it was shortly
after.
A long journey began. After some troubles with Ubuntu 12.04 I switched to
Archlinux, later from wmii to dwm and after that to i3 which I kept for
a few years.
In 2015 I learned about NixOS, switched to it at the beginning of 2016 and in late 2016 I reevaluated my desktop and settled with XFCE.
And here's the thing: I wanted KDE, but it lacked one missing critical feature: Beeing able to sync its configuration between my machines.
I own a desktop machine with three 1080p Monitors and two Notebooks – a Thinkpad X220 and an old Toshiba Satellite (barely used), if that matters at all.
There are things in the KDE configuration files which shouldn't be there,
mainly state information and temporary values, making the whole thing a pain
in the ass if you want to git add your configuration files to git push
them to your repository somewhere in the web and git pull it on another
machine.
Apparently the story is not that much better with XFCE, but at least some
configuration files (like keyboard shortcuts, window decoration configuration
and menu-bar configuration) can be git added and synced between machines.
And it works for me, even with two so different machines.
Some things have to be re-done on each machine, but the effort is pretty low.
But with KDE (I tried Plasma 5), it was pure PITA. Not a single configuration file was untouched, reordering values, putting state information in there and so on and so forth.
And I am rather amazed with KDE and really want to play with it, because I think (and that's not just an attempt to kiss up to you KDE guys) that KDE is the future of Linux on the desktop! Maybe it is not for the Hacker kid from next door, but for the normal Linux User, like my Mom, your Sister or the old non-techy guy from next door, KDE is simple enough to understand and powerful enough to get stuff done efficiently without getting in your way too much.
So here's my request:
Please, KDE Project, make your configuration files human readable, editor-friendly and syncable (via tools like git). That means that there are no temporary values and no state information in the configuration files. That means that configuration files do not get shuffled when a user alters a configuration via a GUI tool. That means that the format of the configuration files do not get automatically changed.
The benefits are clear, and there are no drawbacks for KDE as a project (as far as I can see) because parsing and processing the configuration files will be done either way. Maybe it even reduces the complexity of some things in your codebase?
A word on “why don't you submit this to the KDE project as a request”: I am not involved with KDE at all. I don't even know where the documentation, bug tracker, mailinglist(s), ... are located. I don't know where to file these things, whether I have to register at some forum or whatever.
If someone could point me to a place where nice people will discuss these things with me, feel free to send me an email and guide me to this place!