The syntax and help can actually be done by brute force if need be, although I'd welcome any changes to make the config files easier to parse. The bigger issue is how to affect configuration changes at run-time.
Most configuration tools are based on the idea of editing the configuration files, and then restarting the server. What is really needed is a coordinated way to send changes into a running server with the option of saving these to the configuration files. Obviously not every configuration option could (or should) be dynamically configurable, but avoiding a restart to make minor changes seems critical to sites that need high-availability.
This can be accomplished several ways, but all of which require a cooperative effort with the guys developing the server. What springs to mind are the following:
- shared memory between gui/apache to change configuration values on the fly. Apache needs to be aware that values can get yanked out from under it and saves values during critical sections.
- A trigger to re-read the configuration files without shutting down
- An API to send config changes to
- ??
There are tradeoffs to each, and implementation heartaches
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Sutton [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 1998 10:16 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: GUI infrastructure
I'm just wondering if there is an interest in developing a common
infrastructure in Apache to support GUIs. At the moment, each GUI project
has to create its own definitions of what directives do what, what
arguments they expect, how they merge, how they are validated, etc.
While this is probably fine to some degree, all the projects will have
problems supporting different versions of Apache (that is, if a directive
changes name, the GUI program will have to updates its definition for that
directive), and probably more importantly, supporting varying versions of
different dynamically loaded modules could get tricky.
Ultimately it would be nice to be able to get all the required information
about directives from the server itself (like a souped-up version of
mod_info). But initially it could just come from a file distributed with
Apache or with each third-party module.
This would give information about each directive, as above. It would
provide sufficient information for GUI front-ends to ask for input for the
directive, validate the input, and add it to the appropriate place in the
configuration file(s).
Is there any interest in this approach?
Paul
--
Paul Sutton, C2Net Europe http://www.eu.c2.net/~paul/
Editor, Apache Week .. the latest Apache news http://www.apacheweek.com/
