[Zope3-dev] RFC: Use ConfigParser for High-Level Configuration

[Chris Withers]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> Have you written a ZConfig schema? 

Yup, a few, as well as adding a couple of options to zope.conf, which 
totally abuses ZConfig :-/

> Have you tried to read the
> documentation on writing one? 

Yup :-)

> Have you writtem an application
> that uses ZConfig? 

Yup, couple...

> If you had, I think you'd know what I was
> talking about.

Well, admittedly, it's been a while since I wrote the schemas for 
MailingLogger (although that had to be updated for Zope 2.8) and an even 
longer while for Process 
(http://www.simplistix.co.uk/software/applications/process) and X2Y 
(http://www.simplistix.co.uk/software/applications/x2y) but I don't 
remember it being particularly painful.

X2Y, in particular, is quite an extensive app with lots of plugins, each 
with their own schemas, and I just had a look at the schemas again now 
and find them pretty easy to understand.

I must be missing something... is there something particularly complex 
that you're doing?

> These aren't due to new features added and discarded.  This is
> generally due to refinement based on experience.

potato / potato - tomato / tomato...

Hmmm, that doesn't work so well when it's written down :-/

> I don't know what you are asking, since I said in this thread and in
> the proposal that we could support the old format.

OK.

>>> I assume this was done because it's too much of a PITA to write ZConfig
>>> schemas.
>>
>> I think you assume wrong there...
> 
> Oh? What evidence do you have?  Do you think it was done because
> meaningless options are considered a good thing?

I would assume it's because someone saw an abstraction that wasn't 
really there, as with cache managers in Zope 2.

But, that's just an assumption and likely to be wrong. svn blame may be 
more useful here...

>> Well, maybe they could use ZConfig? Has anyone asked them?
> 
> Why don't you do that.  

I presume 
http://www.webwareforpython.org/archives/list/paste-users.en.html would 
be the right place?

> In fact, why don't you lobby to
> have it added to the standard library?

Sure, I'll give it a go, but if there's already several in there, I can 
see people being reluctant, even if the ones that are in there are 
inferior :-/

Still, Guido did eventually admit HTMLParser.py, so there's some hope :-)

cheers,

Chris

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