Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 22:40:17 -0500 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: syslog.conf syntax change (multiple program/host specifications) Message-ID: <p05200f10ba70be419852@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <200302121615.h1CGFdGG025691@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20030210114930.GB90800@melusine.cuivre.fr.eu.org> <200302120632.36583.wes@softweyr.com> <200302121411.h1CEBRSe025071@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <200302121521.33506.wes@softweyr.com> <200302121615.h1CGFdGG025691@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
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At 11:15 AM -0500 2/12/03, Garrett Wollman wrote: ><<On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> said: > >> So you're preferring the software over the human operator. > >I would not necessarily jump to that conclusion. What I want to >eschew is a proliferation of lots of little languages, each one >subtly different, such that users are forced to learn all of them. >We already have: > > foocap Besides my favorite /etc/printcap file, there's also /etc/hosts.lpd and /etc/hosts.equiv which are referenced by lpd. Those two are of particular interest to me right now, as I want to add some options which would be set based on what host is sending the job to lpd. I either have to add a third file, or I have to add some options to entries in /etc/hosts.lpd. > fstab > [...etc...] > >Every single one of these has a different syntax that the admin >must learn in addition to the relevant semantics, and which any >sort of front-end or configuration-analysis tool must be able >to interpret, in order to do anything useful with the programs >they control. The benefit of something like XML (or Lisp, for >that matter) is that, while still providing for functionally >significant differences, the *lexical* structure is identical >across many functions -- and this makes it much easier to use >other tools (like structured editors) to maintain and document >the files. I bounce back and forth on XML. I can see that it's useful for some things, but I don't think it is appropriate for config files that a user is going to type in. And I certainly don't want to *require* XML config files, because some of our (RPI) config files are automatically generated and we assume the same format of file across a number of unix platforms. I think that trying to XML-ize config files is something that will take some time and effort to do right, and I suspect we would be better off if that was put off for 6.0. I don't think we want to drive our users nuts by constantly changing the format of these files during a stable-branch, and I doubt we'll have the perfect file format in time for 5.1-release. Wes's original proposal is a simple extension to the current syntax, and I think we could decide on what we think about that as a near-term change, without tieing it to the discussion of what to do about XML-izing all config files. As to Wes's patch, I like the new feature but I don't think the config file should be quite so cryptic. I guess I would like to think about it some more. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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