[et-mgmt-tools] ANNOUNCE: Augeas - a configuration API

[Mike MacCana]

On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 17:17 +0000, David Lutterkort wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 12:02 +1000, Mike MacCana wrote:
> > * create an editor for that format (which handles data - settings,
> > values, parents and children, rather than presentation related info
> > like lines and paragraph)
> 
> At its heart, Augeas is a tool to make writing such editors easy, easier
> than starting from scratch for every format. Of course, there's also
> benefit for users if they can edit many config files with the same tool
> instead of having a separate tool for each config file.

Excellent.

Is there a possibility that Augeas could encourage, or actively patch,
applications to read their configuration directly from Augeas format
files? 

Some of the responses to me original comment agreed that a standardized
config file format was incredibly useful, but hard to achieve. 

Distros have some real power here, and Red Hat has used this power for
good in the past:
  
* Red Hat patched KDE to support a bunch of freedesktop.org
specifications (for example, notification area support) back in the day,
and while a few people got their nose out of joint, the changes were
ultimately accepted into upstream KDE. Red Hat just pushed for the
standard first.

* Ditto ISO C - some apps had to be changed for Red Hat's more standards
compliant GCC 2.96, but all those apps - including the Linux kernel and
mplayer - required patching to be compilable on GCC 3 anyway, and after
some grumbling, the third party apps were fixed. Red Hat just pushed
for the standard first. 

A distribution has never encouraged apps to standardize on a config file
format. There's a real opportunity here.

Mike

> 
> > Using 'widely varying formats' is not 'valuable'.
> 
> I was a little oblique .. I meant 'that config data is stored in text
> files is valuable', mostly to contrast that with some other approaches
> that have been proposed in the past.
OK, and agreed.

> >  It's an unfortunate accident that wastes everyone's time with various
> > horrible bandaid solutions
> 
> I think we're all in agreement that the situation is far from the best
> imaginable. That's why I chose "Augeas"[1] as the name for this ;)


> 
> David
> 
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augeas 
> 
>   "In Greek mythology, Augeas ... was King of Elis ... He is best known for his
>    stables, which housed the single greatest number of cattle in the country and
>    had never been cleaned"
> 
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Cheers,

Mike

________________________________________________
Mike MacCana
Technical Specialist
Linux Services 

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