init: API

[Gilboa Davara]

On Sat, 2005-11-19 at 08:24 -0800, Kenneth Porter wrote:
> --On Saturday, November 19, 2005 4:35 PM +0200 Gilboa Davara 
> <gilboada at netvision.net.il> wrote:
> 
> > I was talking about /simple text/ parsers, no XML one.
> 
> How simple? Set the bar too low and you cripple some uses of it. XML's 
> value is in generality. You don't actually have to use all of it. Simple 
> applications can use very simple styles, and yet still be able to leverage 
> the advanced features for corner cases like unusual characters and 
> character sets. There's no requirement that your config file has to be 
> complex. Package developers will have to support what they define, and 
> won't want to spend all their time explaining a complex schema, unless 
> their application is equally complex.

Again, I fail to see why we need complex text inside the package
manager.
Even if you must, you can always shove the translation strings
into /usr/share/locale. (Or /etc/scm/locale if you which to load it from
within initrd.)
It seems the people tend to confuse the application configuration
(AKA /etc/samba/smb.conf) and the service configuration (/etc/init.d/smb
or /etc/scm/samba.conf).
The service manager (scm) configuration should be as simple as it gets.
Same goes, in my eyes, with the service manager itself.


> 
> For those who love var=value pairs, one could always use m4 to expand that 
> into equivalent XML, the way sendmail does to create its legacy cf file 
> from the much simpler mc file.
> 

Adding yet another step of complexity just to fix a dead service.

Gilboa