On Tuesday 28 March 2006 23:24, Shane Stixrud wrote:
This reasoning is flawed and I think it illustrates an example of where our Darwinist Meritocracy has difficultly dealing with problems that are global and counter to our evolutionary path.
It's not flawed reasoning, it's a statement.
There are plenty of reasons why it hasn't happened, among which are a number of experiments with various forms of "registry" ...
The reason most applications use individual config files instead of a central repository is because that makes it much, *much* easier to:
1. Design a domain-specific config language. XML does *NOT* solve this problem; it is a *lexical* (meta)language. The structure goes on top.
2. Point to a different config file when you start a program.
3. Copy config files, rename them, reuse them, move them into chroot() environments, and generally be *free* to do so.
4. There is no step 4.
Tell me, what motivators exist for any project or even groups of projects to adapt a non-standard 3rd parties configuration schema?? None, in fact I am sure there are plenty of reasons NOT to adapt such a thing. When looking at this issue from within a specific microcosms perspective it makes perfect sense why UNIX and Linux have failed to create this standard API after 40+ years of evolution.
So what are you saying?
In fairness I won't attack the straw man. It looks like you are holding one, though.
It is when you look at GNU/LINUX as a whole that this problem becomes obvious and it is for this reason I think Fedora/freedesktop/LSB/FHS or some other entity with ties to the system as a whole will have to champion this standard. A global configuration scheme has little benefit until a large portion of the system is using it, until that threshold is meet it is but another configuration format adding to the systems complexity.
Ah. The "it must all be integrated" straw man. (sigh)
And why are they bothering with SysVinit at all...
My guess is because at the time they did the patches this debate was not hot. It seems they treated sysvinit as a proof of concept that libelektra is usable even at the earliest stages of os initialization.
Why are we all so intent on picking a sysvinit replacement before we have one that's fully useful and does all that the current system does?