[Seaside] odds and ends

Julian Fitzell julian at beta4.com
Wed Jun 29 23:25:25 CEST 2005



Avi Bryant wrote:
> - Does anyone actually use, or understand, the full generality of the
> configuration framework from 2.5?  I was recently using a 2.3 app and
> remembered how relatively simple and friendly the config pages for
> apps were.  What would people think about a re-simplification, keeping
> some aspects of the 2.5 config (like the ability to define
> SystemConfigurations, with default values, in code, and add these to
> deployed app instances), but removing some of the more baroque parts
> (like the inheritance structure for configurations, and the idea of
> "site defaults" as an extra layer between the code defaults and the
> individual apps)?

To be honest, since it's been nearly a year since I've looked at it I'm 
not even sure I can claim to fully understand it.  /But/, I'd like to 
give some thought before ripping it out.  One of the reasons we were 
adding the "site defaults" was because we had several related apps at 
UBC all uses many of the same configuration information (auth servers, 
passwords, redirection URLs, etc).  Now obviously you don't *need* to 
share these settings in one place but it would sure be nice to.  And I 
think the only reason we weren't using them at UBC is because we were 
still using seaside 2.3.  Actually, I may have had that config stuff in 
my branch, so the reason may just be that (a) I didn't get around to it 
before I left or (b) I still don't love the UI for setting up the 
configurations.

Anyway, I'm open to discussion about simplifying it or whatever but I 
don't want to throw it out without anyone having even really grasped 
what it's there for.  We may just need to document, improve the UI, or 
make a basic subset more easily available rather than throwing stuff 
away.  I don't like the idea of losing too much flexibility in 
configuration... nothing irritates me more (ok, that's hyperbole :)) 
than programs with overly-simplistic configuration systems.

Julian

-- 
   Julian Fitzell  --  Beta4 Productions
julian at beta4.com  --  http://www.beta4.com
Seaside: http://seaside.st/


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