.local config files

[Francis J. Lacoste]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 03:28:19PM +0200, Joost van Baal wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Now that etc/lire/<superservice>/defaults is replaced by
> etc/lire/<superservice>.cfg, do we still have the equivalent of
> etc/lire/<superservice>/defaults.local, where each variable's value is
> looked up in .local, and only if not defined there, the value in the
> distributed file is used?  A second nice thing was that the .local file
> was not removed when running make uninstall, so upgrades kept local
> configuration settings.  We might like to keep offering such a thing.
> 

The only configuration there is now that is specific to the superservice
is the report configuration file (<superservice>.cfg). This file
determines which subreports will be included in the final reports and
the order of the reports. It can also contains parameter settings for the
subreport.

The way to change it without modifying the system file is to modify
a copy of <supservice>.cfg and put that copy in $HOME/.lire/etc/

This means several things :

1) Modifications aren't lost after an update 
   (it doesn't touch $HOME/.lire/etc)

2) There are no way to make site-wide local customization. That could be
   fixed by looking for a <sysconfdir>/lire/etc/<supservice>.cfg.local
   file before taking the defaults, if you think it is a needed functionality.

3) There are no way to customize only one parameter while taking automatically
   the rest of the configuration. For example, after an update, the new
   reports won't be automatically added to the customized report.

   Personnally, I think that having all the report's customization in one
   file is easier to grasp for the user then an indirected customization 
   in several files. It gives less granularity but I think the
   tradeoff is good. Running lr_config after an update could be a way to
   see that there are new repots available and add it to the customized
   report.

4) I don't know if there is a need to modify global parameters on a 
   superservice level. (Like to modify INCLUDE_IMAGES only in a specific
   supservice) If this is the case, we could add sourcing of
   <sysconfdir>/lire/defaults.<superservice>  or 
   <sysconfdir>/lire/<superservice>/defaults.local for backward compatibility.

-- 
Francis J. Lacoste
francis at Contre.COM
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