Re: debconf review of cvsd (was Re: stop abusing debconf already)

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 12:12:38PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> cvsd.conf is a trivial config file to parse and modify from what I can
> see. 
> 
>   port=`sed -n 's/^Port *\([^ ]*\).*$/\1/p' < /etc/cvsd/cvsd.conf`
>   
> That's a reasonable way to get any value from it. I'm glad you do this

What about writing values?

I imagine that changing the value of port might be
as simple as:

sed 's/^Port .*$/Port xyz/g' < /etc/cvsd/cvsd.conf > /etc/cvsd/cvsd.conf.new
mv /etc/cvsd/cvsd.conf.new /etc/cvsd/cvsd.conf

(not tested).

However, what if (and I haven't looked at cvsd; some
of my examples may not make sense for cvsd):

- There is more then one Port setting? (its probably illegal
here). Do you change all of them, or only the first one, or
what?

- There is no Port setting and one needs to be added? Is it OK
to blindly add at the end of the file, or should a script try
some black magic to work out the best spot?

- Adding a port setting destroys the config, because the adminstrator
deliberatly deleted that setting for some reason (I am assuming this
would mean something, eg. only bind to a UNIX stream socket, for
instance).

- The system adminstrator accidently or deliberately commented out the
port setting, and puts it back in and finds it doesn't do anything,
because a new port setting has been added to the end and has overriden
the first setting without giving any errors or warnings?

Now thats a lot of "ifs". ;-).

I am just curious though on what how other developers
feel that these situations should be handled.
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>