Hello Willy, hello Tim,

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 at 18:57, Willy Tarreau <[email protected]> wrote:
> > - ssl.cfg              : 4 years with the most recent commit adding a
> > 'verify none' which is questionable.
>
> deleted, I agree with not spreading bad options by default.

I disagree that the amount of the commits and its age are *the* metric
to measure the value of an example configuration. It's a fact that we
seldom make breaking changes to our config parser, that's a good thing
and it's why we don't need to update the example sections for every
stable release. We need to measure the merits of an example file based
on it's content. A short example configuration does not need frequent
updates and it's more useful, the *shorter* it is (as it focuses on
one aspect, allowing the user to quickly grasp the config-concept).

Of course we need to discuss the removal of obsolete ones, which
brings me to the second point:

Could we allow some more time for such things to be discussed? A few
working days instead of less than 2 hours? I get it, you wanted it
done in 2.0, but that's not what I'd call asking for objections.

In the specific ssl example, yes, the "verify none" directive does not
belong there, instead, it should have been a ca-file directive. Other
than that, I don't see neither why this example would be outdated, nor
where we could point people asking the extremely specific "howto ssl?"
question instead.



> As history has shown the examples tend to be neglected.

History has also shown that documentation is neglected. But we can
point people to specific examples, just as we can point people to
documentations.

That's why we need examples. To point people to them when they ask.


> if you start from the need to implement something, you search
> it in the architecture manual and you copy-paste a look-alike
> config that you can then extend.

I was unaware that that's your intention with the architecture manual,
I always saw it as an explanation of basic load-balancing concepts
applied to haproxy (principal features like load-balancing and health
checking), but I realize now what you mean.

However for a 1400 lines document with 4 commits in the last 10 years,
all 4 of which typo/spelling fixes only, we cannot exactly claim
success.

If we want to retire the examples/ directory and put everything in one
file, we probably need to revamp the architecture manual completely
and create something that Cyril can use for the HTML converter.
Otherwise and in its current condition, people are probably not gonna
find it, and we'd also have a hard time referencing single examples in
there.

I'm really not sure if this is all worth it and quite frankly, don't
get the problem with single example files in the examples/ directory.
Explanations can be inline with the configuration, so it's even
lighter to read than an example in the architecture manual.


I'm not sure about the gh-wiki, I don't know how it works technically
and I'm a bit afraid that we don't have the actual content in *our*
git repositories. Also unsure about if we really still own the content
once we put it up there. This is different than feature requests or
issues, because those are processes that start and end, while
architecture guides and everything referenced in the "Proposed plan"
is mostly here to stay and they are also *a lot* of work. When I
scrolled through the "proposed plan" I felt like this could be the
content for 2 or 3 books. Of course, simple example configurations are
not that valuable, but still, I'm unsure about that wiki.



cheers,
lukas

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