[kamion-devel] About the XML files

[Sven B. <sve...@rw...>]

Hello!

As far as I understood the messages in the archive the key to kamion's 
acceptance and usage are the xml-files containing the information on which 
files to back-up.

Further there seems to be an issue with backing-up data that is not in a fixed 
position, e.g. amarok's collection, podcasts or playlists or kmails 
mail-folder.

I read that scripting would be needed, yet I do not understand why this would 
be the best and easiest solution. Hence I would like to suggest a different 
way and hope that I did not make any wrong assumptions.

Kamion should not be the "source" of the xml-files, since if developers of an 
application change something kamion does not know about it, unless the 
application to be backed-up is the source of the xml-files.

So what I thought about is the following:

Amarok knows which kconfig-settings provide the paths to the data that needs 
to be backed up, so it can create a file that contains the neccessary keys. 
Kamion can access these keys via KConfig. Further amarok can provide a list 
of files or folders to back-up. If the user changes the the paths for the 
collection, there is no need to update the xml-file because the kconfig-keys 
did not change.

So for amarok kamion would for example need to know:

[Collection]
Collection Folders=
and that it has to access it via Kconfig.

config/amarokrc
that it is a file

apps/amarok
that it is a folder to be backed up completely

Of course one can add some description etc. to it that tells the user what 
those items stand for.

For kmail e.g.:
[General]
folders=

Kamion could search .kde/share/apps on demand for .xml files and check whether 
they contain information and use it to display a list the user can pick the 
applications from which he wants to back-up.

This way, even if the applications did not yet implement a way to 
create/change the xml-files it would be quite easy for normal users to set 
them up and provide them to others.

All other users would have to do is to load them into Kamion or copy them 
into .kde/share/apps

Sven