RE: environment variables vs defaults

[ian . mondragon]

Ian -

you are correct in your assessment.  but as i said, this is a *GNUstep*
project for non-darwin that is being developed on FreeBSD-4.2, so there is
no NetInfo/lookupd <grin>.  where the applications are concerned, i am
trying to focus on good, clean design as opposed to the "voodoo" you
mentioned, so i will be actively replacing the parts of several programs
(gradually more as time progresses, with the goal of creating a true
GNUstep-based system) that read in config files to read from either the user
or system defaults databases.

@end

-Ian Mondragon

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Lister [SMTP:s350797@student.uq.edu.au]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 5:25 PM
> To:   Mondragon, Ian
> Cc:   darwin-development@lists.apple.com; discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
> Subject:      RE: environment variables vs defaults
> 
> On Wed, 3 Jan 2001 ian.mondragon@bankofamerica.com wrote:
> [some ruthless snipping below]
> >as for the debian issue, i have absolutely NO clue - i run freebsd almost
> >exclusively.  the driving force behind what i envision this project
> becoming
> >is simply that i'm sick of .rc, .conf, .whatever files.
> [snip]
> 
> >therefore, the project that i started (which i am tentatively calling
> >GNUSys) is not just an env-to-defaults tool, but rather a 3-level system
> [snip]
> 
> >the third level is a defaults database for the system itself, obviously
> >protected from evil hackery as much as possible, that provides the same
> >functionality for system applications/processes as level 2 does for user
> >applications.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >please feel free to offer suggestions...
> 
> Ian,
> 
> Your third level sounds a lot like NetInfo and lookupd; would that be a
> reasonable assessment? Or are you thinking more of trapping each and every
> config file read and write by any process and routing them to the defaults
> database? The latter sounds like a *lot* of voodoo, but of course the
> existing lookupd replaces only a few common files (e.g. /etc/resolv.conf,
> services, passwd, group, etc), and only those that have file specific
> library calls (e.g. gethostbyname, getservbyname, etc). Anything more than
> that surely needs application support?
> 
> Ian