Hey Hans-Jörg,
thanks for clarifying things.
Of course there is still a conf folder and yes you can still define files there as before. Restoring my OH1 config was the first thing I did after unpacking OH2. Eventually I even found the homematic OH2 readme on GitHub and was able to define a thing and a few items.
The actual problem I tried to describe is, that configuring OH2 is getting inconsistent. Elements added via PaperUI are only in the database and elements defined in a config file will be imported in the database, but not written back. In conclusion: config files are just a junk of the whole system and can be outdated by more recent changes in the database or via PaperUI.
Kai Kreuzer descussed this problem in a very informative way in a thread about backups (only found it now):
- Recommended way to backup/restore OH2 configurations and things? - #5 by Kai
- Recommended way to backup/restore OH2 configurations and things? - #19 by Kai
His argumentation totally makes sense. It seems the real problem is lack of a strong and feature rich UI (without wanting to insult anybody working towards that) and a lot of documentation carrying this vision and supporting users in the phase of transition.
Both problems combined create some serious trouble, have a look here for an example. That’s what happened to me more or less yesterday.
If there are configuration files, you expect them to be absolute. That’s what tech-savvy people know and like from systems like the linux /etc/ folder. Now on the other side, there is quite a lot of software storing it’s data (i.e. the openhab conf folder) in a database or other binary storage and making it accessible via GUI (one great example being GitLab). This has many benefits as Kai described in detail and of course can work and a GUI is the most feasible solution for the normal enduser.
@Kai’s vision is to switch over to a database driven storage. Following that idea everything should actually be done via GUI or Karaf console and the items, rules and sitemap folders should be abandoned right from the OH2 beginning. Things and items will be configured in the GUI and rules and sitemaps can be graphically or textually edited in an online editor. (The last two could stay file-only in the beginning) Solutions like this are actually out there: Habmin, Node-RED, IFTTT, Homematic-GUI, you name it. I chose OH1 because files are not the easiest solution, but the most powerful and open one. PaperUI will need to reach a whole different level of functional complexity to compete with that.