Gconf, Dconf, Gsettings and the relationship between them
Dconf is a data store designed for storing configuration. It is the replacement for Gconf, which was used for the same purpose. Eventually, no programs should depend on Gconf any more.
Gsettings is a development library used to read and write to a configuration store backend. On Linux, it uses Dconf, but on Windows, it uses the registry, and on OS X, it uses a native data store.
Application developers and end-users are recommended to use Gsettings, not Dconf directly.
See also:
- What are the differences between gconf and dconf?
- Can I use dconf-editor to modify Gconf settings?
- GSettingsMigration on gnome.org
GConf is obsolete. It is the older GNOME 2.x configuration API and system, and has been replaced by DConf/GSettings in newer versions. However, some applications still use it.
GSettings is a GLib implementation of DConf, which stores its data in a binary database.
The gsettings
command line tool is simply a tool to access or modify settings via the GSettings API, in the same way that the older gconftool
command line tool is for GConf.