[Catalyst] YAML vs. *

[Andrew Ford]

John Siracusa wrote:
> On 6/9/06, Andrew Ford <A.Ford at ford-mason.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>> I think a major problems is that often configuration file contents are
>> not designed in anyway; they just evolve as a serialization of the
>> information that the programmer happens to need to initialize the
>> application (and often this will not be documented) and with no thought
>> for the people who will have to deal with them.  For example there will
>> probably be a dsn lurking in there somewhere, which will mean nothing to
>> a lot of people, rather than separate database name, username and
>> password that might make some sense to them (database type and such like
>> can probably be assumed or defaulted and the application could build up
>> the dsn).  So some poor support guy ends up getting told to edit a file
>> that is undocumented, obtuse and has a fragile format, and then things
>> break.
>>     
>
> To be fair, the DNS situation only arises if the thing being
> configured requires a DNS string.  There's nothing about Catalyst
> proper that dictates this.  So it seems like your complaint is about
> the nature of data that needs to be configured, not how to do so in
> the configuration file itself.
>
>   
No.  My complaint is that so often the programmers don't think to 
translate the data that needs to be configured into items that are 
meaningful to those who will have to maintain the configuration files 
(which are after all the "user interface" for those people).

Andrew

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