[augeas-devel] [Augeas] #82: Separate lens grammar from lens filter

[Augeas]

#82: Separate lens grammar from lens filter
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 Reporter:  nveeser      |       Owner:  lutter
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new   
 Priority:  major        |   Milestone:  next  
Component:  Augeas       |     Version:  devel 
 Keywords:               |  
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 Just a thought.

 I have been having issues connecting the right lens to a file.  The lens
 specifies a generic grammar (for me Shellvars), but also specifies which
 files to load with that grammar (/etc/sysconfig/exim).  It seems the list
 of files that work with a given lens differs from Linux to Windows, Redhat
 to Debian, but the lenses are primarily the same.  I tried 'set
 /augeas/load/Shellvars/incl[last()+1] /etc/sysconfig/exim' syntax, but I
 can't get that to work in puppet, from which I am using augeas.

 It would be nice if there were a mechanism to change/update/append to that
 lens -> file mapping, without changing the lens itself.   That way the
 packages maintainers, and end users could update this list for their own
 purposes, and still receive updates of the basic lens without conflict.

 Abstractly, I posit that the actor who is best at writing grammar for a
 given syntax, and the actor who is best at mapping that grammar to a set
 of files in a given environment are rarely the same.  (People who dig into
 the functional language to write a grammar don't want to spend time
 learning about every possible OS/file that the grammar might apply to.
 Similarly, people who package and deploy the tool to a particular
 environment don't want to learn the language to define what might be
 abstractly expressed as a file -> lens mapping.)

 Having both of those data sets in the same file creates an ownership
 conflict on that file. Or something like that.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://fedorahosted.org/augeas/ticket/82>
Augeas <http://augeas.net/>
a configuration API