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On April 22, 2002 01:16 pm, George Shapovalov wrote: |
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> I think this will be a very BAD, BAD thing to do. |
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> Imagine, you want to get a really small gentoo installation, where you do |
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> not want just anything extra... |
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> Imaging paranoid sysadmin concerned with sequrity who wants to trust |
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> absolutewly nothing. He would hate the idea that something stands between |
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> him and his conf files... |
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> Well, you get an idea. |
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> Even Mandrake does not do things this way, and for the reason. |
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For now thought I have to admit that a deamon which would translate the xml to |
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the old format would be seen as a danger to administrator and therefore |
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should be totally optionnal. Note thought that etc-update is also such a |
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tools that could make your config file all disappear if badly written. The |
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same apply to tools such as diff/merge and even to editors. So I guess that |
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real paranoid administrator use hexedit or tools that they wrote and have |
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investigated the byte code to ensure that their compiler didn't had |
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bugs/hacks. I don't think for paranoid because otherwise I would be myself a |
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paranoid and I wouldn't even had time to write down emails. So imagining |
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paranoid sysadmin is like imagining that I'm rich. Make me loose my time. |
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> Now if you just want some frendly conf interface, there is a way to |
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> correctly implement this (just as done in Mandrake, Suse and many other |
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> distros) - create an appropriate tool (optional). That tool may even use |
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> some personal database after it parses all config files, but leave these |
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> plain-text conf files *authorative*. If you are really onto it you are |
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> welcom to create an ebuild for linuxconf or even to try to strip Mandrake |
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> tools out of their distro and create an appropriate ebuild... |
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The conf file would have to stay authoritative as support for existing |
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software need to be maintain. I was in no way going to drop support for |
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existing application and therefore that argument was never an issue in this |
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idea. The idea was create equivalent xml files and hide from non-advanced |
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users the original one. Based on the feedback I'll have to promote the xml |
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one without touching the old one. |
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> Another point I want to make here (on the original 1 vs many files): it is |
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> far more easier to update many files that a single big one. After all, when |
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> I do etc-update I accept changes to ~60% files reject ~30% and have to hand |
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> edit the remaining 10% only. Now, with a single file that would be about |
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> 100% :). |
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It is actually not easier for everyone. It is easier once you've done it once |
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or twice so that you know which files you don't play with. But once you know |
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it then it also become easy to skip part of a single file if the tools that |
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you use present the different change inside that file in block. This is |
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exactly what xml can offer. |
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|
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The simple fact that etc-update tool exists prove that handling many file is |
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actually harder than a single one. Otherwise that tool wouldn't have been |
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wrote or wouldn't be used by administrator or normal users. |
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> Also (and more importantly) it is far easier to check an updates |
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> (look through diffs) to plain-text files rather than XML or anything |
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> else... |
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Again this is a matter of tools, if you use text diff tools to see the diff |
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between xml files than yes it will be harder. The same is true if you use |
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XML diff tool to diff two text file it will be harder. Comparing a xml diff |
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tools with a text diff tool can only be done once we have example and because |
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at the xml level there's more information about what is what for the software |
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I can easily bet that an xml diff tools with valid template would be far |
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easier than text diff. The xml tool will be able to help you out during the |
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merge while the text diff can only hope that you know what you do. |
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And if you know everything about all the different config files without going |
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to your man pages or doing an edit of the file to see the various comments |
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inside the file then you won't use that configuration management tool. |
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- -- |
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Yannick Koehler |
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