Re: hands off wwwoffle.conf

Dan Jacobson <[email protected]> writes:

> It's just not going two work out every time, both the user and the
> upgrade program both trying to maintain wwwoffle.conf.

I don't see why it isn't going to work.  The upgrade script only adds
entries that are missing or deletes entries that are obsolete.  There
is nothing forcing you to use the script to update your configuration
file.  I provide it as a convenience to the users.  I use it myself
and I don't have problems (although I do go through and tidy up the
changes that it has made).

> Proposal: most of the changes the upgrade makes are to the
> documentation. This should all be done to the wwwoffle.conf manpage,
> and the documentation can now be removed from wwwoffle.conf.

The old version of the webpage for editing the configuration file uses
the comments in the file as the comments on the webpage.  If there are
no comments in the file then the web page would not be very useful.
For the newer web pages for editing the configuration file the
comments in the file itself are not used.

> Indeed, at least in the Debian model, I believe configuration files
> are not to be changed behind one's back. We are to be asked if we want
> to see a diff and whether to accept it or not.
> 
> Some users create their wwwoffle.conf from scripts, so changes anybody
> else makes to it will get overwritten, dangnabbit.
> 
> It would be best to convey anything important that needs to be done to
> wwwoffle.conf via other means: messages upon upgrade that require a
> RET to continue, email to root, README.upgrade, etc.

It would be very difficult to catch this when running 'make install'.
This is the method of upgrade that you get if you download and use the
WWWOFFLE source code.  All that the user gets is a message that
suggests running the upgrade-config.pl script if an existing
configuration file is found.

> Indeed, there should be no wwwoffle.conf supplied at all. Defaults are
> defaults, the rest is the exclusive domain of the user.  Models and
> examples all should be on the man page, or a wwwoffle.conf.sample.

An empty wwwoffle.conf file is not very user friendly.  One with all
of the default options in it pre-configured encourages users to look
up the meaning of all of the entries.  Without any example entries it
is up to the user to search for the options that they might want
rather than read a list of default options and change the ones that
sound interesting.

-- 
Andrew.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew M. Bishop                             amb-Uxr6IM1mbv2TY6FTCsQk+9Bc4/[email protected]
                                      http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/

WWWOFFLE users page:
        http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/version-2.8/user.html