[Pki-devel] CLI for editing profiles

[Endi Sukma Dewata]

On 9/3/2014 12:25 AM, Fraser Tweedale wrote:
>>> SimpleProperties and PropConfigStore currently live in
>>> com.netscape.cmscore.base.  Is there any objection to moving them to
>>> com.netscape.certsrv.base so that they are available to the CLI
>>> code?
>>>
>>> This item is the last of the review items (including Endi's
>>> subsequent review) blocking the next cut of the patchset.
>>
>> Do those classes have dependencies on other server-side classes? I was
>> thinking to simply use java.util.Properties. Or maybe just a String then the
>> ProfileClient parses it into a Properties.
>>
> Aha, I was not aware of java.util.Properties.  My immediate use case
> doesn't require use of the sub-configs, so Properties would suffice.
> Due to the heirarchical nature of profile config I suspect we might
> *eventually* want PropConfigStore, but YAGNI for now, I guess.
>
> In regards to moving SimpleProperties and PropConfigStore, there is
> one other class - SourceConfigStore - that would have to have been
> moved.  AFAICT there are no other dependencies.
>
> On the subject of SimpleProperties: how does our SimpleProperties
> class differ from java.util.Properties?  A cursory examination
> reveals only two differences: SimpleProperties' hashCode() and
> equals() methods take the `defaults' into account, whereas
> Properties inherits this methods from java.util.HashTable.
>
> The only place SimpleProperties is used is in SourceConfigStore
> (which extends it), and the only place SourceConfigStore is used is
> in PropConfigStore (protected SourceConfigStore mSource).  Neither
> PropConfigStore nor its subclasses invoke mSource.equals() or
> .hashCode() so it seems - from this brief examination and without
> the knowledge of history - that we could possibly get rid of
> SimpleProperties?
>
> If there is an important reason why SimpleProperties exists, I look
> forward to learning about it :)

I don't know the history either, but the SimpleProperties allows you to 
specify the default values of some properties so what you get is the 
effective values. This might be useful for the server because the server 
works using the effective property values, but I'm not sure if the 
current code is actually using it. On the client side we should be 
dealing with the configured properties only.

There are probably some other differences such as adding a header on the 
top of the file and the property value encoding. I don't think we need 
it on the client side though. Also note that some of these codes are 
quite old, and newer/better utility classes might have been added into 
the standard/common Java libraries since then, so in some cases it might 
be better to replace it if possible. Usually the hard part is testing it 
to make sure we're not breaking the existing functionality.

-- 
Endi S. Dewata