Hi all, On Apr 10, 2012, at 6:13 PM, Ali Pey wrote:
> I also think it would be a great addition to have a simple build-in text > pre-processing. For more advance features people can continue to use m4 as > desired. > The problem is the word "simple" on your sentence :-) How do we tell if a feature request qualifies as "simple" or not? For me, the config file is fine as it is. It does have limitations, but m4 helps in solving them. > Regards, > Ali > > > On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Nick Altmann <[email protected]> wrote: > Against for M4: > Configuration file may not be generated properly from m4 file(s) > sometimes (because missed errors in m4), then server cannot start in > some cases. It's when m4 in init.d script. When cfg-file built from m4 > manually, it's uncomfortable. > > In my opinion, opensips is the most powerful sip server, so it should > have both options. And users should make decision which to better use > in each case. > You should not attempt to run OpenSIPS with the new generated file before testing it, you may have made a silly typo and the server would be stopped. You can do it in 2 steps: - Regenerate the cfg file from the m4 files and call use opensips -c to validate the config file - Restart the service if the config was valid > > 2012/4/10 Bogdan-Andrei Iancu <[email protected]>: > > Hi, > > > > I'm bringing here a discussion started on devel list, as I would like to get > > more opinions on the matter. > > > > The discussion started around the decision if makes sense to have MACRO > > substitution (as text pre-processing) directly in OpenSIPS, considering that > > right now M4 is heavenly used for this (as additional tool to opensips). > > > > So, the debate was : have built-in text pre-processing versus using M4 as > > text processor > > > > Pros for M4: > > - no effort to develop extra stuff - just install M4 > > - can do really complex things (more than only macros, ifdef, include, > > etc) > > - you can use it or not > > - easy to integrate with start / stop scripts > > Against for M4: > > - need to be installed and integrated I'm not aware of any system where installing m4 is troublesome. > > - you may have a mismatch for the line number (if errors reported in > > cfg) between the .m4 file and .cfg file > > While this is true, you can look at the generated cfg file, and leaving comments is also a good idea ;-) > > Pros for buit-in: > > - you do no need to install M4 at all (everything comes packet) > > - you may get accurate reporting on errors (for line in cfg) > > Against for M4: > > - more devel work to re-implement macros, ifdef, etc > > > > > > Now, I would like to get your opinions on that (you as opensips users), to > > see if we stick to using M4 for cfg pre-processing or there is a real need > > to have this functionality as built-in. > > As I said in the other thread I think that using resources for enhancing the current configuration language is not a good idea. Ideally I'd like to program my routing logic in a real programming language like Python, Lua or Ruby not something totally different which newcomers need to learn and is not a fully blown programing language. M4 is a powerful tool which can be used together with the current configuration language to achieve all the requirements mentioned in the previous mail, without modifying OpenSIPS. Maybe it would be a good idea to use m4 in the sample configs? Having a opensips.m4 file with the main routing logic and some local.m4 file with custom settings like DB configs, etc could help people get their feet wet with m4. Even adding a "opensipsctl reconfigure" command could make sense, it could just do the following: pushd /etc/opensips m4 opensips.m4 > opensips.cfg opensips -c /etc/opensips/opensips.cfg popd So if there is an error you could see it before actually attempting to run OpenSIPS with the change applied. Those are my 2 cents :-) Regards, -- Saúl Ibarra Corretgé AG Projects _______________________________________________ Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.opensips.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/users
