init: API

[Gilboa Davara]

On Fri, 2005-11-18 at 22:06 -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 04:58:01AM +0200, Gilboa Davara wrote:
> > True. /But/ by design, but I've yet to see an XML configuration, that
> > isn't 4 times the size of its clear text source. I'd suggest you compare
> > GNOME configuration files to their KDE counter-parts.
> 
> For the sake of 4K who cares
> 
> > "only package maintainers do init.d scripts", I also tend to edit
> > scripts by hand. 
> 
> Use an XML editor. If its got the DTD/schema/etc then it won't let you
> make a mistake and it can present the document in a sane manner. Any 
> document..
> 

Ummm... which brings us back to square 1.
Linux is build around Unix philosophy:  You can fix a dead machine from
a serial console over a 9600 bps line using a 2K editor.
You can fix a machine by issuing a cat /etc/temp.conf | sed
's/HOSTNAME/NEW_NAME/g' > /etc/temp2.conf;
mv /etc/temp2.conf /etc/temp.conf; reboot.
You don't need special tools or editors. You just need to touch a couple
of text lines inside a configuration file. (Be that initab, lilo.conf or
grub.conf)

Windows is build around the concept of "We know better; we have an uber
smart configuration manager (registry) which is build (in most cases)
around a schema and uses special tools to manipulate (registry editor)".
The idea is all nice and dandy, that, until you have a machine that died
due to botched driver upgrade or a minor registry corruption. 

While using XML is still a couple of steps short of having huge useless
registry hives, it is a step in the wrong direction.

Gilboa