New repository configuration ponderings

[Panu Matilainen]

On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 19:31 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 20:17 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 18:20 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 17:33 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> > > > I've been thinking about improving the repository configuration and
> > > > related things for a while now. Just yesterday I realized we could
> > > > easily use the existing main configuration system for this, instead of
> > > > inventing yet-another-file-format and parser for it. 
> > > 
> > > Well, nice proposal, but ...
> > > 
> > > ... wouldn't an xml config file format be more suitable?
> > 
> > I *hate* XML configuration files from user POV.
> 
> 
> If xml is suitable for something, then it's parsing config files.
> 
> It avoids all the kind of semifunctional implementation nonsense apt's
> and yum's config currently carries around, and would dramatically
> simplify the syntax and a parser's implementation.

Note the "user POV" in my comment above. From programming point of view
I fully agree XML would be much nicer configuration file format. It's
just that XML isn't "human editable" IMO (programmers don't count as
humans here ;)

> But given your attitude, I withdraw my comment above. All your proposal
> does is adding yet another source of errors and of incompatibilities.

Dunno, apt has a parser which does the job adequately and users are
already familiar with the format.

	- Panu -