Differences between Elektra and GConf [LWN.net]

Differences between Elektra and GConf

Posted Nov 30, 2004 17:08 UTC (Tue) by bkw1a (subscriber, #4101)
Parent article: Elektrified X.org released

Here's an excerpt from the docs:

Compared to Gnome's GConf, Elektra is not a daemon, and is much lighter. GConf uses XML documents as backends, stored in user's home directory. XML based software are memory eaters. GConf seems not to be preoccupied with access permissions, making it a good solution only for personal use in desktop (high level) systems. Also it is heavily Gnome dependent as we can see from the libraries it uses:

$ ldd /usr/bin/gconfd-1
libgconf-1.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgconf-1.so.1 (0x4375b000)
liboaf.so.0 => /usr/lib/liboaf.so.0 (0x4373f000)
libORBitCosNaming.so.0 => /usr/lib/libORBitCosNaming.so.0 (0x00cfd000)
libORBit.so.0 => /usr/lib/libORBit.so.0 (0x00ca9000)
libIIOP.so.0 => /usr/lib/libIIOP.so.0 (0x43735000)
libORBitutil.so.0 => /usr/lib/libORBitutil.so.0 (0x00ce9000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0x00b50000)
libgmodule-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-1.2.so.0 (0x00d58000)
libglib-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0 (0x00d31000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00b74000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x00a15000)
libpopt.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpopt.so.0 (0x001ff000)
libwrap.so.0 => /usr/lib/libwrap.so.0 (0x4387c000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x009fd000)
libnsl.so.1 => /lib/libnsl.so.1 (0x4f727000)

This is useless for an early boot stage program (/usr/lib may be still unmounted), and for a very small OS installation that won't require desktop features, like a router, small firewall, or any other appliance. On the other hand, the Elektra database access library is very slim with a minimum of dependencies:

$ ldd /lib/libkdb.so
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x00111000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x009fd000)

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