How to package gconf schemas
----------------------------

Background

(Skip this if you are familiar with gconf, schemas, %gconf.xml files.)
Somewhere between GNOME 2.12 and 2.14 GConf changed the file format of
its xml backend.  Previously, if you had a key called
/desktop/gnome/interface/foo, the corresponding value was stored in
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/desktop/gnome/interface/%gconf.xml
These files were created using gconftool-2 by installing schemas files,
stored in /etc/gconf/schemas.
So we had 100s of small xml files, each containing just a few keys/values
and translations of the key descriptions in all languages.
This became a performance issue, as it took several seconds to load
these files when gconfd-2 started.  The new approach is using
one "merged" xml file that includes all key - value pairs.
Localisations were split into separate xml files, one for each locale.
The new files are /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/%gconf-tree.xml and
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/%gconf-tree-<locale>.xml
First a program called gconf-merge-tree was used to generate the
merged xml files from the directory structure.  Once the merged xml
files were created, gconfd-2 only read those and ignored the directory
structure.  So we ended up with 2 gconf data bases which could become
inconsistent.  Fortunately,  gconftool-2 can now install the schemas
straight into the merged xml files.  So the preferred way to install
schemas is doing just that.


Introduction

In JDS3, we installed the schemas into $RPM_BUILD_ROOT during 'make install'
and included the generated %gconf.xml files in the -root packages.
This was kinda broken as it wasn't possible for multiple packages to
install gconf keys in the same directory as they would have had to
deliver the same %gconf.xml file with different contents.
However, the format of the xml database changed to merged xml files
(see the Background above), so we were forced to change the way we
deliver gconf data.
The basic idea is similar to what Linux distributions do: we package the
schemas files and install/uninstall them using postinstall/preremove
scripts.  The only difference is that we can't use gconftool-2 directly
in procedural package scripts because of problems with Live Upgrade and
Alternate Root installations (see postrun.txt for more details).
So what we do is, use postrun to run gconftool-2 "as soon as possible".
The gconftool-2 command will install the schemas into the merged gconf
files in /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/%gconf-tree*.xml.


Step by step instructions

1) Make sure that each -root sub package that delivers gconf schemas
   depends on SUNWgnome-config (gconf) and SUNWpostrun.  Add these
   2 lines to the end of the %package definition:

     Requires: SUNWpostrun-root
     Requires: SUNWgnome-config

   Example:

     ...
     %package root
     Summary:                 %{summary} - / filesystem
     SUNW_BaseDir:            /
     %include default-depend.inc
     Requires: SUNWpostrun-root
     Requires: SUNWgnome-config
     ...

2) Make sure that %install does not include the directory based %gconf.xml
   files.  Note, if you use separate Linux and Solaris spec files and %use,
   these commands should go in the Linux spec file:

     export GCONF_DISABLE_MAKEFILE_SCHEMA_INSTALL=1    
     make DESTDIR=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT install

   If you do this, the only gconf-related files in $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/etc
   should be schemas.

   Some more explanations and historical details follow, skip to 3) if you
   don't care.

   In JDS3 and early JDS4 builds, we installed the schemas explicitely
   in the Solaris spec files' %install section like this:

     export GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE=xml::$RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_sysconfdir}/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults
     for S in $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_sysconfdir}/gconf/schemas/*.schemas; do
       %{_bindir}/gconftool-2 --makefile-install-rule $S >/dev/null
     done

   Then we had to remove the zero-lenght %gconf.xml nodes (for example
   /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/apps/%gconf.xml) as they would
   have otherwise appeared in multiple -root pkgs, which is a violation
   of the packaging rules:

     chmod -R a+rX $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_sysconfdir}
     for f in apps/?gconf.xml \
	      schemas/?gconf.xml \
	      schemas/apps/?gconf.xml \
	 ; do
       test ! -s $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_sysconfdir}/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/$f && \
	 rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_sysconfdir}/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/$f
     done

   This was really broken, because if the package that includes the removed
   %gconf.xml files is not installed then the files included in this pkg
   will not be found by gconfd-2.  Worse, if, by mistake, no package
   includes some empty %gconf.xml nodes, the leaves won't be found at all.

3) Add a %post and a %preun script that installs/uninstalls the schemas.
   Note, you need to list the schemas files in the %preun script.
   In the %post script we always install all schemas available on
   the system for performance reasons.

     %post root
     ( echo 'test -x /usr/bin/gconftool-2 || {';
       echo '  echo "ERROR: gconftool-2 not found"';
       echo '  exit 1';
       echo '}';
       echo 'umask 0022';
       echo 'GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE=xml:merged:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults';
       echo 'export GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE';
       echo '/usr/bin/gconftool-2 --makefile-install-rule %{_sysconfdir}/gconf/schemas/*.schemas'
     ) | $BASEDIR/var/lib/postrun/postrun -u -c JDS_wait

     %preun root
     test -x $BASEDIR/var/lib/postrun/postrun || exit 0
     ( echo 'test -x $PKG_INSTALL_ROOT/usr/bin/gconftool-2 || {';
       echo '  echo "WARNING: gconftool-2 not found; not uninstalling gconf schemas"';
       echo '  exit 0';
       echo '}';
       echo 'umask 0022';
       echo 'GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE=xml:merged:$BASEDIR/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults';
       echo 'GCONF_BACKEND_DIR=$PKG_INSTALL_ROOT/usr/lib/GConf/2';
       echo 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PKG_INSTALL_ROOT/usr/lib';
       echo 'export GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE GCONF_BACKEND_DIR LD_LIBRARY_PATH';
       echo 'SDIR=$BASEDIR%{_sysconfdir}/gconf/schemas';
       echo 'schemas="$SDIR/###FILE1###.schemas';
       echo '         $SDIR/###FILE2###.schemas';
       echo '         $SDIR/###FILE3###.schemas';
     (...)
       echo '         $SDIR/###FILEn###.schemas"';
       echo '$PKG_INSTALL_ROOT/usr/bin/gconftool-2 --makefile-uninstall-rule $schemas'
     ) | $BASEDIR/var/lib/postrun/postrun -i -c JDS -a

4) update %files root (or %files -n SUNWfoo-bar-root), it should look
   something like this:

     %files root
     %defattr (0755, root, sys)
     %attr (0755, root, sys) %dir %{_sysconfdir}
     %{_sysconfdir}/gconf/schemas/###FILE1###.schemas
     %{_sysconfdir}/gconf/schemas/###FILE2###.schemas
     %{_sysconfdir}/gconf/schemas/###FILE3###.schemas
   (...)
     %{_sysconfdir}/gconf/schemas/###FILEn###.schemas

   Note: ###FILE1### ... ###FILEn### must match the list of lines in
   %preun.  Please don't use *.schemas but list each schemas
   file so that when a new schemas file is added to the source tarball
   the build will break and we will notice that %post %preun and %files
   need to be updated.

That's it.  If something is not clear, have questions or need a review,
feel free to email me at [email protected].

Last updated: 2006-06-02