[jtriangle]

>an .ini file should not be a thing in Windows

Hard, hard disagree there. Having config files available is vastly preferable to using the unmitigated shitshow that is the windows registry. That and a config file at least gives users a prayer at being able to provide some sort of troubleshooting information, and provides savvy users with a way to actually solve problems on their own.

>half ass ports it to windows

Redmond, themselves, do all sorts of seemingly 'wrong' things with their directory structure, which tells me the 'free for all' nature of it is intentional, and not wrong at all. It is a terrible structure, it does cause problems, but, that's the conditions you work under while using windows. It's mostly OK in practice, but as bitwarden found out, there are conditions that developers have to account for if you require security and safety.

And factually, your presumed solution of "put things in the right place" is doubly broken, because if one acquires the correct privileges, there is no location on a windows machine where cleartext data is safe. The solution is not "store it in the correct location" the solution is to encrypt sensitive data at rest, regardless of location, which is more or less what bitwarden did. That's the correct strategy, and it's operating system agnostic.

[calamari4065]

Agreed. The windows registry needs to be killed with fire.

There's no appreciable difference between the registry and a directory of config files except that instead of an INI parser you have to use the much, much worse WIN32 API.

Editing config files is fairly safe and user-intuitive. Sure you can break something by writing the wrong config file, but you do not risk breaking everything. But clumsy use of regedit does have a chance of totally borking the entire system.

And then you have maniacs who store user data in the registry. I know of at least one game which stores save files in the registry.

I get the intention of the registry, but it's just not fit for purpose. Maybe it was better back in the 90s, but it's just a hellscape now.

[raggi]

There are real integration challenges with the "simple file approach":

  - File locking and concurrency
  - Atomic writes / moves
  - Realtime change observations

> clumsy use of regedit does have a chance of totally borking the entire system.

So does a clumsy rm -rf, which shows up in stories here far more often than stories of people breaking their registry.

Can you provide a recent reference to someone bricking their system with regedit?

[dangus]

I think you could even make the argument that nobody breaks their registry because nobody wants to mess with something so user-unfriendly. Even the developers making applications tend stick all their config in .ini files because files are easier for everyone to work with.

[garaetjjte]

Then use SQLite.

[viraptor]

That solves 1 out of the 3 issues... But at that point, why bother? The registry is a database already.

[axus]

But it's so easy to export all my PuTTY profiles from the SimonTatham registry folder to a .reg file and use on the next computer...