From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Apr 14 14:15: 7 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 863D037B440 for ; Sat, 14 Apr 2001 14:15:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 39634 invoked by uid 100); 14 Apr 2001 21:15:02 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15064.48598.415646.715767@guru.mired.org> Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 16:15:02 -0500 To: Joseph Mallett Cc: John Baldwin , FreeBSD Chat Subject: Re: Just an observation - MUA's seen in the lists In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Joseph Mallett types: > Yes but if it's done in Windows(tm) it's a Bad Thing (sm), however when a > Unix does it, moreover, FreeBSD, it's known as centralising configuration. And if it's done on Unix (tm) the way it's done on Windows (tm), it's still a Bad Thing (sm). The problem with the registry isn't that it's a central repository. There are two problems with the implementation. The first problem is that *everything* is in it, including information critical to booting the system. If that's sufficiently screwed up, you can't get the system to a point where you can use the tools required for dealing with it's binary format running to fix things. That leaves you SOL. I could, similarly, put all the Unix config files in an SQL database. If the system got so fried I couldn't start the database, I'd be in a *bad* way. Having everything in flat text files may not be as convenient, but it means I can fix the things with nothing more than a statically linked copy of ed. > Imagine having to do this to back up configuration: > find / -name '*.conf' -exec cp {} /backup/ ';' > And then imagine restoring everything to its proper home. > And then imagine all the files you missed because application X decided it > didn't want to name its files with .conf, X11 comes to mind. Yup - having a lot of undocumented .ini files that you frob with point-n-click tools is bad becase, as you so aptly illustrated, you don't know where they are because you normally use the point-n-click tools to edit them. This makes them hard to find to fix if things are broken to the point the that those tools aren't working. The Registry has replaced those files with a bunch of undocumented registry variables that have the same problems, with the added problem that you can break things so badly that you can't edit them even if you know where they are. The config files on Unix have or at least can be - horror of horrors - edited by hand. As a result, every configuration file on all my unix systems is either in the state it was installed in, or backed up in my perforce server. The exception is the password file, and the crontab files in /var/cron, because those break don't follow that rule. While some people call the results of hiding the information you need to fix things behind GUI interfaces "user-friendly", I'd say that "idiot-friendly" is more appropriate, as it assumes the user is an idiot who can't fix things anyway. I don't think the public is that stupid, and even if I'm wrong, hiding that information from users who aren't idiots isn't friendly to those users. > Anyway, it isn't bad, it's a good, efficient idea, or at least, the best > one someone's found that I know of, or at least, that Microsoft/Unix/Apple > would care to use. Yup, it's a good, efficient idea. It's the MS implementation that's FUBAR. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message