Developers of Sympa

[Xavier Bachelot <address@concealed>]

Le 12/04/2019 à 09:34, Luc Didry a écrit :
> vendredi 5 avril 2019, 17:26:39 CEST Xavier Bachelot wrote:
> > This looks like an interesting idea.
> > And this is more or less what is being done for the various web and mail
> > templates.
> > About the file location, I wouldn't "pollute" /etc with the
> > sympa.conf-dist file. This is not a configuration file and should not be
> > confused with one. I would rather use $DATADIR, the same place as the
> > other default files.
>
> When you update packages in Debian and you have modified the conf file
> in /etc and you said you want to keep it, Debian put the new version
> of the conf file provided by the package in a file suffixed by
> .dpkg-new.
rpm does the same. Files that are marked as %config(noreplace) are only 
replaced if they have not been touched in any way (checksum, perms, 
owner/group) and if it has been modified, the new file is installed as 
.rpmnew

> One of the first thing you do after installing Sympa is going to
> /etc/sympa to configure it. I think it makes sense to have the -dist
> file in the same directory: it's easier to notice it than if it’s in
> $DATADIR.

What I meant is :

- $DATADIR/sympa.conf-dist
It contains all sympa parameters and their default values.
This file is always replaced when sympa is updated.

- $SYSCONFDIR/sympa.conf
It contains the values that must be set by the admin.
The parameters in this file take precedence over the default parameters 
from $DATADIR/sympa-dist.conf.
The admin may add any parameter that he wants to override.

sympa-dist.conf is not a config file, it should never be modified by the 
admin and thus packaging guidelines/FHS mandate it to not be in $SYSCONFDIR.
$SYSCONFDIR/sympa.conf is the real config file and the admin will find 
it easily. The file would have a comment pointing the admin at 
$DATADIR/sympa.conf-dist for a list of all parameters and instruct him 
to copy the ones he wants to be changed to $SYSCONFDIR/sympa.conf.

> Anyway, that’s a point that can be discussed later. First thing first:
> creating the -dist file 🙂
Indeed :-)

> > Iirc, there are a couple settings that are mandatory to be set by the
> > admin (domain, listmaster and possibly others), so a minimal sympa.conf
> > would still be needed.
>
> I wanted to keep it, indeed and let admins pick what they want in the
> sympa.conf-dist file.
Yes, that's how I understood it.

Regards,
Xavier