Thoughts on language-level configuration support?

[Rhodri James]

On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:15:19 +0100, jfager <jfager at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mar 31, 10:44 pm, "Rhodri James" <rho... at wildebst.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
>> [...] What
>> restrictions can be put on the value you get back?  What can the
>> help system say about this, or do we have to go back to doing all
>> that by hand?  Now translate all those questions into the very
>> different environment of a config file.  Repeat with a database,
>> and all it's quirks.  By the time your colossus has acquired
>> enough parameters to at least hint at the desirable answers to
>> these questions, you've effectively duplicated the interfaces to
>> all of the config mechanisms you're trying to replace and you've
>> still lost a whole heap of flexibility.

> Yes, you're right, the code that actually injects the configuration
> isn't trivial.  I never intended to imply that it was.  But it would
> probably only have to be written once (people would only write their
> own if they had a special need).  The win is that the underlying code
> doesn't have to change just because the end-user configuration format
> did.

On the contrary, because the configurable items can be introduced
pretty much anywhere in module, class or function, the code that
injects the configuration ends up having to be written over and over
and over again.  None of the questions I asked are rocket science,
most of them apply to all configurables differently, and none of
them can be interpolated from the name being assigned to the object
produced by the config and the default.  This is not going to be
a win.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste Herder to the Masses