Matthew Rosewarne on 8 Jan 2008 18:29:43 -0800


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Re: [PLUG] Config Files (Was: Sharing an Internet Connection)


I'm sure I won't get any friends for saying it, but config files are a 
terrible interface (the important word!) to configuring systems in many 
common situations.

From the point of view of a developer or someone administering multiple 
systems, configuration files provide a largely insurmountable challenge.

1. Configuration files are extremely difficult to edit programmatically.  Many 
applications get around this by simply writing "DO NOT EDIT!" somewhere in 
the file or having an extremely limited syntax.  Placing such restrictions on 
config files negates any benefit from being able to edit them manually.

2. Configuration files are not very granular.  This makes it extremely 
difficult to propagate changes to parts of a configuration without 
overwriting the whole thing, which is an enormous obstacle to managing 
multiple machines or editing a configuration programmatically.

3. When a user modifies a configuration file, the program is typically not 
aware of the changes.  While this may be useful in some situations, most of 
the time this would involve restarting the program and hoping the changes 
don't cause it to barf.  In a high-uptime environment, this is problematic.  
It also makes it far more difficult to have hooks run when certain values are 
changed.

4. Text files are slow and unwieldy for applications to read or write.  A 
configuration file must often be parsed in its entirety in order for any of 
its information to be extracted.  Similarly, they usually must be written out 
fully for any changes to be saved.  While it might be possible to get around 
this with regex magic, it still requires parsing the entire file and is 
likely to break.

5. Just about every configuration file has a different syntax.  Not only does 
this mean that users must learn all sorts of different syntaxes to manage 
their systems, but that a different parser program must be written for every 
individual file.  Often this results in a scenario like that of TeX, where 
there is only one parser implementation capable of fully understanding the 
contents of a file.


There are other issues, but those are the most important ones I can think of 
off the top of my mind.  I'm certainly not going to claim that an approach 
like the accursed Windows Registry is superior, it's terrible.  The best 
option I can think of would be a flexible configuration _interface_ 
(by "interface" think "API" rather than "GUI") that could be viewed/edited as 
a text file, or maybe an XML file, or even an LDAP tree, with the actual 
storage being handled out of sight.  I would hope that something such as the 
Elektra Initiative would come into fruition and gain more widespread use, 
giving us Free software users the best of all possible options.

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