Re: use and abuse of debconf

[Robert van der Meulen <rvdm@cistron.nl>]

Hi,

Quoting Nicol?s Lichtmaier (nick@debian.org):
>   Just a thought: What about having, for each kind of config file, a
>   program that converts it from and to an XML version, so:
<snip example>

>   * A generic way to show hierarchical configuration data (I think that
>   any config file can be expressed in an information tree).
I think cfengine does something like that, in a less-information-tree-ish
manner.
I'm currently working on something that allows creation of different
configuration files from a single source (i.e. ldap tree,database,
whatever), and believe me - there are a _lot_ of different config file
syntaxes. It would be cool - but A Lot Of Work, afaik.
Apart from that, i wouldn't like limiting myself to XML configfiles, rather
'a source of configuration stuff' - i'll decide if i want that to be a
database, ldap, XML, some other storage thing, or the files themselves,
later.

>   * A standard way to refer to a configuration option (xpath):
>   /interfaces/iface[1] would access the first iface, and
>   /interfaces/iface[2] the second.
The only _real_ standard way would still be the config file itself, afaik ;)
A base to generate config files from would be handy, but it has to be
_totally_ in sync, always. And there's people who want to modify the
original file itself, too.
(i'd like to have my named stuff in a database, parts of my apache config
maybe, but i like to keep touch with the 'oldstyle' configuration of lots of
other stuff)

>   * The config file writer (and other tools) could easily created with
>   XSLT.
Doesn't this confine us to XML ?

Greets,
	Robert

-- 
			      Linux Generation
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