From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7624df5e57d09688 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-05 07:31:03 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: config files proposal Date: 5 Jun 2002 07:31:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <4519e058.0206050631.cbbd621@posting.google.com> References: <3CFCE218.585D56E2@san.rr.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.115.221.98 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1023287463 7895 127.0.0.1 (5 Jun 2002 14:31:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 5 Jun 2002 14:31:03 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:25358 Date: 2002-06-05T14:31:03+00:00 List-Id: Darren New wrote in message news:<3CFCE218.585D56E2@san.rr.com>... > Antonio Duran wrote: > > 1. In my experience, most of the time, config files are writen, edited > > or modified by humans and read and interpreted by programs. > > I think that's true on UNIX (esp. server programs) much more so than on > Windows. I can't remember the last time I edited configuration manually on > Windows. That's because of the way Windows is designed. With everything thrown in one big database (the registry), the penalty for a user hosing the configuration file is just too great to risk it. Every program *has* to inlcude support for updating registry settings safely, lest they risk their users hosing their entire system. It doesn't sound like we are planning a "monolithic database" approach, so this won't be an issue for us. That said, I actually go into the registry manually myself lots, and I know there are plenty of Microsoft support pages that specify procedures involving manually updating the registry. The procedure for setting up autologon in NT is an example. > > 3. I think that is important to handle more than one config file in a > > single program. > > Unquestionably. Then clearly we are *not* in the "one monolithic database" situation. > I think it's also important to have system-wide, program-wide, and user-wide > config files. How "wide" they are should be up to the developer to set up and support. However, the facility should allow for such setups. For instance, if chaining is supported, then a Unix developer could put the first file in ~, the second in the installation directory, and the third in /usr/local somewhere. -- T.E.D. Home - mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison) Homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html