Re: Suggested dual human/binary interface for proc/devfs

[Andrew Morton]

George Bonser wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 8 Apr 2000 [e-mail] wrote:
> 
> > The problem is that ASCII/UNIX-file-system is a generic, exportable,
> >  and long lasting solution, while every binary format known to humankind
> > has been painful, limited, and rapidly obsoleting.  Perhaps the solution is
> > faster tools for manipulating text files.
> 
> Or perhaps a common format for the text files would help.
> ...

Amen to that.  Look at the all the hoops which linuxconf has to jump
through to try to tame things.

Part of the reason for this is that nobody sat down ten years ago and
defined a config format and wrote a definitive library for parsing it. 
(cf getopt(1)).  So even now, one of the first things we do when we
start a new app is to cook up a new config file format and busily code
it up; probably because writing config file parsers is easy and fun...

Havoc Pennington has created a really good config system called
'GConf'.  (I would provide a ref, but the Internet seems to be down
today).  GConf uses CORBA and it suggests an XML backend, but the
interfaces are defined so that all this stuff is pluggable. I wish it
well, because this host-centric config cruft is a Really Big Problem for
the manageability of Unixes.

[ I _hate_ wandering offtopic, but guys, /etc/conf.crap is a tragedy ]

-- 
-akpm-