Elektrified X.org released [LWN.net]

Elektrified X.org released

Posted Nov 30, 2004 17:28 UTC (Tue) by alex (subscriber, #1355)
Parent article: Elektrified X.org released

I'm not convinced by this approach. I think human readable config files are a great idea for one reason. Comments!

For example my exim.conf file is well commented with the changes I have made over time to handle more complex mail setups. It give a lot of context to why you changed a value from one thing to another which is useful when you want to tweak stuff 6 months down the road.

It would be nice if there was a more standardised way of doing config files so each app didn't have its own perculiarites. But until then I want to keep my configs human readable!

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It *is* human readable!

Posted Nov 30, 2004 18:46 UTC (Tue) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]

I get that, however thats not the impression I got from the Press Release. I'm all for a decent config method however my exim example is still an valid one. The mapping to key/value pairs (with individual comments) is not the most useful for context. Compare:

# This director handles forwarding using traditional .forward files.
# It also allows mail filtering when a forward file starts with the
# string "# Exim filter": to disable filtering, uncomment the "filter"
# option. The check_ancestor option means that if the forward file
# generates an address that is an ancestor of the current one, the
# current one gets passed on instead. This covers the case where A is
# aliased to B and B has a .forward file pointing to A.

# For standard debian setup of one group per user, it is acceptable---normal
# even---for .forward to be group writable. If you have everyone in one
# group, you should comment out the "modemask" line. Without it, the exim
# default of 022 will apply, which is probably what you want.

userforward:
  driver = forwardfile
  file_transport = address_file
  pipe_transport = address_pipe
  reply_transport = address_reply
  no_verify
  check_ancestor
  file = .forward
  modemask = 002
  filter


/userforward/driver = forwardfile          # the driver is a forward file
/userforward/file_transport = address_file # the file transport is an address file
/userforward/pipe_transport = address_pipe # the pipe transport is an address pipe
..
..

Do you see my point? Don't misunderstand me. I think Elektra is a valuable contribution to FOSS configuration and doing things like the X.org patch set is a good way to introduce the system to the world. However I don't think we will see an end to the monlithic configure file either.

Re: It *is* human readable!

Posted Nov 30, 2004 20:40 UTC (Tue) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

Full marks for a beautifully commented exim.conf ...

However, surely the same result could be obtained by putting .Comment file(s) judiciously in appropriate directories. A viewer tool would be capable of merging everything to do with exim (or any other program) back into a view that looks like a single file with comments. A sufficiently smart one could even edit that view and save the keys/values back in one hit.

viewer tool

Posted Nov 30, 2004 22:07 UTC (Tue) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]

"A viewer tool" vi is my viewer tool. I'm probably sounding horribly snobbish about plain text files, but they require nothing more than an editor. If the tool isn't as easy to use as that then it will be all the harder to get acceptance. But thats just an engineering challange to be over come. Feel free, its all about solutions competing on merit ;-)

viewer tool

Posted Nov 30, 2004 22:28 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Look around http://namesys.com/v4/v4.html#etc_passwd for an example of making this vi-able.

In the mean time Elektra has a tool to edit a subtree as an XML file.

viewer tool

Posted Nov 30, 2004 22:47 UTC (Tue) by JamesErik (subscriber, #17417) [Link]

Part of the point is that this paradigm doesn't even *require* a viewer tool. One could do 90% of what one needed with just 'ls' and 'cat' plus have the added benefit of fine-grained fs-based security.

viewer tool

Posted Dec 1, 2004 8:21 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Well.. make that ls, cat, echo, and shell redirection, to cover both the
read and write sides of the coin.

Duncan