From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Mar 27 11:21:12 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from winston.osd.bsdi.com (winston.osd.bsdi.com [204.216.27.229]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D077337B719 for ; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:21:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@osd.bsdi.com) Received: from localhost (jkh@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by winston.osd.bsdi.com (8.11.3/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f2RJKn036683; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:20:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@osd.bsdi.com) To: DougB@DougBarton.net Cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: configuration files In-Reply-To: <3AC06153.EEBF632E@DougBarton.net> References: <20010327081943.EE95A37B718@hub.freebsd.org> <20010327004317J.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> <3AC06153.EEBF632E@DougBarton.net> X-Mailer: Mew version 1.94.1 on Emacs 20.7 / Mule 4.0 (HANANOEN) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <20010327112049F.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:20:49 -0800 From: Jordan Hubbard X-Dispatcher: imput version 20000228(IM140) Lines: 18 Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Can someone please, just for fun, define the actual _problem_ you're trying > to solve. All I've seen so far are solutions [sic], but no real good > definition of the goals you're trying to achieve. Without this, continuing > to talk about solutions is futile. I think the "problem" is pretty obvious, Doug. We have a whole bunch of system and application configuration data living in /etc and a few other places. Almost every configuration file has its own unique format and set of rules about how you're supposed to edit it or what utility (foo_mkdb) you're supposed to run after editing it so that its backing database, if it has one, is updated. It is, in short, a highly ad-hoc system which has evolved over time rather than benefitting from a single coherent design strategy. Somehow retrofitting a single coherent design strategy into this mess without pissing off all the legacy people *is* the goal people are discussing here. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message