Re: [gentoo-dev] Interest Check: Dynamic config files for portage

[Josep Sanjuas]

On Tue, 1 Jul 2003 15:05:02 +0100
Toby Dickenson <tdickenson@××××××××××××××××××××××××××××.uk> wrote:

> On Tuesday 01 July 2003 10:58, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Before I go and invalidate a bug, I thought I might take the idea around
> > here to see if it has any merit in terms of usefulness/interest.
> >
> > The idea stems from the fact that etc-updating a make.conf file can be a
> > bit of a stressful event.  And as portage's set of features grows, so too
> > will the size of the make.conf file.  I get the impression that the
> > make.conf file is a little hard to parse, with the huge comment blocks etc
> > etc.  So my proposal is this: a make.conf.d directory which contains files
> > for each section of the make.conf: use, flags, fetch, packagevars.
>
> Are there any other advantages to having an /etc/make.conf.d?.... I dont see
> any.
>
> If the *only* advantage is to reduce the headache when using etc-update, then
> surely we should be looking for improvements to etc-update and sdiff, rather
> than changing the structure of one of our core configuration files.
>
> (And Im not sure the proposed solution will help much anyway.... why should
> updating multiple files in /etc/make.conf.d be any easier than updating one
> monolithic /etc/make.conf?)
>
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>
>

I think there could be more advantages. It would make make.conf faster to parse from scripts, and this might one day become a necessity as it continues to grow.  It'd also make portage easier to maintain, because for example, if I want to change the disftile or rsync mirrors then I can edit /etc/make.conf.f/fetch, or whatever its name would be, instead of finding the appropiate vars in the big make.conf. In the files, all flags could have their detailed descriptions, so that you wouldn't need to open another file eg a make.conf.help. After the update, then we could run something like /sbin/portage-update then have a make.conf with only necessary stuff in it.

Also, we might have one configuration tool per topic, which is good instead of having each conf tool to deal with the entire make.conf. (And maybe a big setup tool that could call all the more specific others.)



Josep Sanjuas

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