Ubuntu – Configure gnome-shell extensions from command line

GConf is obsolete. It is the older GNOME 2.x configuration API and system, and has been replaced by DConf/GSettings in newer versions.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.

It is not possible to do this with gsettings, as the option simply does not exist. There is extensive documentation on gsettings and the internals of the program at the official Gnome site.

However, there is an interesting project at github called gsettings-info that does exactly what you ask. It is a script that queries information about either schemas and/or keys from the gschema information and returns the same data about them that is displayed when you use dconf-editor.

You'll requiere Git and git xsltproc (library that it uses to read the gschema information)

sudo apt install git xsltproc

Obtain the program with:

git clone git://github.com/jmatsuzawa/gsettings-info.git
cd gsettings-info 

Now you can run the script

./gsettings-info <command>

You can either run it from the home folder (and occasionally update it by going to the folder and using git pull), or install to the system or place it in your ~/bin folder so it is available by just entering gsettings-info.

If you are running it from the downloaded folder, entering ./gsettings-info help will give all the options, as does the README and the information at the Github page.

You can find much information on both the schemas and keys. Here is an example of how to find data about certain keys. This assumes it is run from the downloaded folder, and so ./ is needed to run the script.

1. To find out details about the particular keys of the chosen schema, enter:

   ./gsettings-info desc org.gnome.gnumeric.autocorrect
   

   which returns:

   init-caps: Autocorrect initial caps
   init-caps-list: Autocorrect initial caps
   first-letter: The autocorrect engine does not correct the initial caps for words in this list.
   first-letter-list: The autocorrect engine does not correct the first letter for words in this list.
   names-of-days: Autocorrect names of days
   replace: Autocorrect replace
   

2. To show defaults and information for a particular key, use:

   ./gsettings-info show org.gnome.gnumeric.autocorrect init-caps
   

   which returns:

   KEY: init-caps
   TYPE: b
   SUMMARY: Autocorrect initial caps
   DESCRIPTION: Autocorrect initial caps
   DEFAULT: true
   

This seems to be exactly what your are looking for, and is about the only way to show this information on the command-line instead of in dconf-editor.