[Dev] Profile directory changes landed, location of __repository__ etc. changed

[Heikki Toivonen]

Alec Flett wrote:
> - the ability to direct your application to a different "profile"
> directory really is a big win - it makes testing easier, it allows
> add-on products to do stuff like store your "profile" on USB keys, etc.
> (see http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2005-01-07.html to see where
> trends in this area may go)

While this is certainly nice, I think our real goal is getting to the
stage where the repository runs as a separate process on the local
system and possibly also remotely. I don't know if it would be possible
to store that onto a USB or other device. However, it should be possible
to store cryptographic material used by Chandler on such a device - for
example your personal certificate and trusted CA list so that you can
connect to a remote server even in the case where you don't have locally
  cached copy of the repository.

> I know I'm late to the game on this one but IMHO, profile management
> should be limited to a command line parameter as described on the Wiki,
> and we should not try to do "profile management." The fallout of this is
> that we can/should get rid of the extra two levels of redirection
> "Profile/<profilename>" and just use the random seed.
> i.e. ~/.chandler/lk8sffkis.rep/ or C:\D&S\alecf\App.
> Data\OSAF\Chandler\lk8sffkis.rep

I think it would be easier to have a profile name the user can specify
rather than just generate something at random, even if we only had
command line option to select the profile.

As long as we don't have the repository running in a different process,
I agree it should be possible to do this without UI. To delete a profile
just manually delete the dir, to create a profile just specify a
non-existing name, to select existing use an existing name.

But if/when we have the repository in it's own process I am pretty sure
we'll need some way of adding and removing accounts, disabling and
enabling accounts and deleting all the data in an account. Since all of
this should be just editing items in the repository, whatever UI we have
for that would minimally suffice (but I'd really like a separate UI
because you don't want to accidentally wipe accounts or data).

> I agree with John that if the repository is where we (want to) store
> everything, then we should call it the "repository directory", and try

See my previous response while I think it is a bad idea to call this
"repository directory". If we do manage to put everything into the
actual repository I could change my opinion. But we'd need to agree not
to write anything else there, like chandler.log etc.

--
   Heikki Toivonen

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