The Strengths and Weakness of Fedora/RHEL OS management

[Shane Stixrud]

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Florian La Roche wrote:

>> (oh, right semantics is not your problem, you don't even do typing/schemas
>> but I'm sorry 90% of unix conf woes are semantics only).
>
> I think this is pointing at a key item: apps apply too much semantics
> on how they read config settings. Maybe common ways could be worked out
> if bigger projects would cooperate on a common lib/infrastructure for this?

So true.  I think the key (pun intended) point the semantic argument is 
missing is that application configuration semantics by their very nature 
is easily changed/fixed.  So while syntax is a pita to fix due to its 
functional elements, semantic problems can be identified and patches 
subjected by novices in many cases.  I note that in same cases changing 
semantics may be more difficult say for example changing dhcpd.conf's 
subnets directive from using "10.0.0.0 255.255.255.0" to 10.0.0.0-24 but 
this is the exception not the rule.

>
> I still agree that this would be a very good goal to aim at, but also know
> much much work it is to get there. And we already see in this thread on
> how hard it is to agree on common/acknowledged things. ;-)

That I am afraid is an established fact, I do have "faith" that as a 
community we are capable of moving this in the right direction though... I 
think the blood bath may be unavoidable however :)

> P.S.: So while the french are used to bedins and bathrooms without paper,
>      it might take us until development is done by robots to get sane
>      and easy to use config files that support updates. They might also
>      not be needed anymore by that time. ;-)

Leave it to the french to spoil and otherwise good analogy *sigh*

Cheers,
Shane