On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:36:11 -0800 (PST) Shane Stixrud shane@geeklords.org wrote:
I would be insulted if I didn't know you were just making a generalized statement :). Who here hasn't spent more than 2 minutes trying to figure a missing period in a named conf file, or more than two minutes setting up ldap for the first time, or more than two minutes figuring out where to find a specific option and value for /etc/modules.conf etc... The problem is each time you touch something you haven't touched in the past one must spend significant time figuring out how to make the change even if they already know what they want to change. This is not true for all configuration files, but it is for many. The amount of neurons I have dedicated to configuration syntax and where the lists of values and their descriptions are stored is many more than I would like.
lol, naw i think you mistook my meaning. I'm not saying that all config editing can be handled in under two minutes. What i am saying though is that no more time than that is needed to comprehend the config file format. Once you've seen one config file, you've seen em all; more or less.
A standard config file format isn't going to lessen the burden if understanding what all those config options etc mean. Even if that config file is presented in a pretty gui gconf-editor like tool.
The "non-initiated" see this as complex and on this specific issue I agree, it is more complex than it needs to be.. I am just used to it and shrug it off.
If for every "key": its default, possible values (on, off string, float etc..) is readily accessible and for every key there is a simple description much of this complexity is eliminated.
I just don't think this is really the significant part of what makes configuring a system difficult. Happy to be proved wrong.
Sean