[bzrweb PATCH] look up repository descriptions in a config file

[Chris McCormick]

On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 09:35:24AM -0400, Sean Russell wrote:
> 
> The provided example is an excellent reason why XML should be considered for 
> this.  I can easily imagine, six months from now, a proposal to add more 
> information to the <author> section:
> 
>   <treedescription>
>     ...
>     <author>
>       <email>...</email>
>       <web>...</web>
>     </author>
>   </treedescription>
> 
> Using XML will guarantee extensibility, and provides the ability to store 
> hierarchical structure. 

I agree that it's pointless having religious wars about what config
file format is best, but I do think that if you have to edit a config
file a lot by hand it is nice to have one that is easy to parse with the
human eye. That said, I don't want to make flames, so it's as a purely
academic exercise and with no hidden motives that I propose a method
for using ConfigParser in a manner that is extensible in a way that is
similar to an XML file:

---------------------------------------
[treedescription]
author: *myauthor
foo: bar
pants: 100

[myauthor]
email: dude at dudeland.org
web: http://awesomedude.org/
---------------------------------------

So your config parser instance would do something like this:

author = cfg.get("treedescription", "author")
if author[0] == "*":
	authbits = cfg.options(author[1:])

You could easily write a superclass of ConfigParser that handled this
style of referencing elegantly.

Another example; later if you wanted to make 'web' more complicated your
entry would look like:

---------------------------------------
...
[author]
email: dude at dudeland.org
web: *myweb

[myweb]
http: http://awesomedude.org/
rss: http://awesomedude.org/blah/rss/
---------------------------------------

On the other hand, you present many other good reasons to use XML, even
if some people do find it annoying to edit by hand. I guess it comes
down to how people are going to edit the config files and what their
preference is.

Best regards,

Chris.

-------------------
chris at mccormick.cx
http://mccormick.cx
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