[TriLUG] Re: conf files (was re: cdrecord or something like that)

[Scott G. Hall]

Lee Fickenscher <elfick at trilug.org> wrote:

>What I mean is that if something is truly a "default", so much that you
>don't need to modify the conf file to get it working, does it really
>need a conf file? Hard code the defaults and have it use those if it
>finds no conf file. That way, if the defaults work for ya, great... no
>extra work, conf file, or confusion over where the conf file should be.
>If the defaults don't work for you, (vim|emacs|nano|ed|whatever)
>file.conf. I think I kinda drifted from the original arguement of where
>the conf file should be kept to should there be a conf file, but oh
>well... :-)
>
>-Lee


So you are saying that one set of "defaults" meets every user's hardware
and package configuration every time?  The reason to have a file hold the
defaults, is so that the installer program can probe the system and ask
the user for input to dynamically initialize the configuration on a post-
install before the user first runs the software.  A post install script
can not only set such default values, but initialize them to a sane state
so the software will indeed come up the first time -- no matter what the
user has installed or configured elsewhere.

But heaven forbid that all such Linux programs install their config files
in something like /etc/config.d like Sys-V or some BSD systems  ;-) , rather
than scatter them per a programmer's whim.

-- 
Scott G. Hall,
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall at BellSouth.Net