Re: Bug#170843: status of patch

[Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net>]

(Please respect my "Mail-Followup-To:" and don't CC me on list mail)

On 14-Dec-02, 03:10 (CST), Chipzz <chipzz@ULYSSIS.Org> wrote: 
> On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Steve Greenland wrote:mjjj
> > Because not every machine is a single-user machine, and not every user
> > can edit /etc/esound/esd.conf?
> 
> That is one more reason NOT to have this (~/.esd.conf) file/variable. Do
> you expect every user to tweak his own settings let alone know about this
> undocumented variable/ ~/.esd.conf ?

1) The existence of a capability to read a ~/.esd.conf doesn't imply
requiring its use. 
2) If it is supported, why isn't it documented?

> If you're giving that as an argument you clearly haven't done any system
> administration (for multi-user machines) yet.

Only for 15 years. And one my goals is to have sensible, working
defaults, but *when it makes sense*, allow the users to adjust things to
suit themselves, rather than imposing my preferences.

Let's try again, quoting myself:

> > ... but if it makes sense to pass options that are user preferences,
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > then it also needs to support an environment variable or ~/.esd.conf
> > or some such.

I wan't suggesting that the user be required to configure their own
stuff in order for esd to *work* on a given machine, simply that if
there are setting that are *preferences*, then it makes sense to allow
the user to set them, in *addition* to what's in the system wide file.
It's fairly standard unix practice for a program to read a system wide
configuration file and then, additionally, if it exists, a user specific
one. It's not even uncommon to have certain settings that are not
user-configurable.

> > Yes, it sounds like gnome-session should start esd with esd.conf by
> > default to obtain options that required for the card to work,

> Read above why it most definately shouldn't.

It shouldn't read /etc/esound/esd.conf? Why not? (Ah, I confused things
by leaving the "/etc/esound/esd.cohf" off, apparently assuming the lack
of a leading "." would make my meaning clear, which is a fairly subtle
distinction and unreasonable expectation. Sorry.)

Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland

    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net