A few comments:
execonlyonce 5sec ## this is a directive GLOBAL to
ALL actions!
You should never be able to declare a globally-impacting variable
outside of the global scope. It should be in <global> up at the top.
If you allow this, it will confuse people: when reading this, how
would we know that it was globally impacting without the comment? It
appears to be a scoped declaration.
<action dynfile>
type omfile
Perhaps:
<action name=dynfile type=omfile>
That would make something like this more readable:
<input name=inp10515 type=imtcp><params>listen 10515; ruleset
remote10515</params></input>
In other words, everything should be nameable, and everything defined
in-scope should also be reference-able.
I'm a little concerned by the reference to rulesets in the input
section of the example - there you've got an example of something
being referenced before its been declared. That can also be
confusing, even though I understand how that is being handled.
I think it comes down to this (i'd bold it if this wasn't plain text):
We should be able to easily understand what is being declared against
what is being applied, and I think this initial mock-up can be
confusing.
Lastly - please.... HUP configuration reloads. Having written that
type of code myself, I realize its not easy, but it would be very much
appreciated.
-Aaron
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 7:02 AM, Rainer Gerhards
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> me again with some feedback request ;)
>
> As you all know, rsyslog.conf format is ugly (to phrase it politely). Adiscon
> has begun an initiative to unify config language across products. I'd like to
> join that initiative with rsyslog, thus gaining some extra help. So my plan
> is to actually begin looking at the config language once I am through with
> the current round of optimizations.
>
> To do so, I would like to receive your feedback on a config proposal that I
> have been able to discuss with an internal expert. We have now based the
> format on the familiar Apache config format, with some extra bells and
> whistles to make it more useful for syslog. Most importantly, my personal
> feeling is that pure Apache format is quite verbose, and thus it may take too
> much space (read: make unreadable) to describe a plain vanilla rsyslog.conf
> (all those "pri.severity /do/somewhat" rules). As such, I have asked for a
> way to describe more condensed rules. I think we have found a nice
> compromise.
>
> Also, I have included some things into the config format that would easily
> enable me to do a next round of performance enhancements once we have the new
> format in place. It allows to express things like shared actions, which
> simply cannot be done with the current engine and would be a major pain to
> implement without a new config format. As a side-note, I will probably be
> able to obtain, from Adiscon's closed source, a higher speed expression
> evaluation engine, which would be something really nice.
>
> I have posted a hypothetical config in the new format to
>
> http://www.rsyslog.com/download/new_rsyslog.conf
>
> It should be relatively self-explanatory (at least to people who know Apache
> config) -- if not, that's already a bad sign ;)
>
> I would appreciate feedback on this config format. Is it useful? Is it
> readable? Does it look sufficiently simple for simple use cases and
> sufficiently expressive for complex cases? Would you like to work with such a
> format?
>
> Please raise your voice especially if you DO NOT LIKE the format -- the
> reasons is that I will probably work towards such a format if I don't get
> feedback that convinces me it is a bad idea to do so ;)
>
> Thanks to all,
> Rainer
> _______________________________________________
> rsyslog mailing list
> http://lists.adiscon.net/mailman/listinfo/rsyslog
> http://www.rsyslog.com
>
_______________________________________________
rsyslog mailing list
http://lists.adiscon.net/mailman/listinfo/rsyslog
http://www.rsyslog.com
