INN config file parsing infrastructure

Todd Olson tco2 at cornell.edu
Fri May 5 16:35:45 UTC 2000


Hi Russ
>
> > The group idea is very useful ...  But it could become hard to figure
> > out by hand from the config file what value is set for what.
>
>Why?  I'm not following why this would be.


Imagine say four groups enclosed in a group and that repeated three deep.
    group
      group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
      group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
      group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
      group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group
         group
           group
           group
           group
           group

If each group had 10 lines the entire config file quickly becomes 
very long.  At this point looking at one of the bottom most inner groups
and walking upward by hand to figure out which values are overridden
at which level is IMO error prone. 

>
> > It seems essential to the infrastructure to have a tool (based on the
> > parse library) that allows you to ask
> >     1) for this "group" what are all the parameter:value pairs
> >        set explicitly or implicitly
> >     2) which of these are set only be defaults built into inn
>
>This information is all available and part of the structs in my original
>proposal.  1) in fact will be static const data generated from the .def
>file.


Hum ...  I thought that part of the information was directed at the programmers
who would encorporate the parser results into code in INN.

I am raising a plea for end-adminstrator comand line tools to be 
built on this parser you are proposing.  The point is that us administrators
would find it handy to be able to ask how INN sees the data from the
command line.  As long as the config parser you are proposing to create
permits such a tool to be built against it ... great!!
With out such tools, the group structure of the config file could become
hard to understand by eye.


Regards,
Todd Olson
Cornell University




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