Proposed lexer for parsing krb5.conf files

[Nicolas Williams]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 05:41:32PM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 04:04:24PM -0600, Nicolas Williams wrote:
> > But time passes and issues accumulate.  The lack of a configuration tool
> > means that the configuration tool for krb5.conf is $EDITOR, and that
> > causes I18N problems that will soon bite.  The primary allure of any
> > other format, for me, is that it's a chance to start with a clean slate
> > -- even taking backwards compatibility into account (a significant
> > constraint, that).
> 
> But switching to XML doesn't solve the lack of a configuration tool;
> writing a configuration tool solves that lack, and you can do that
> without regard to what the back-end format looks like.  
> 
> If you think that using a generic XML editor (which typically has the
> usability of Window's regedit) counts as a configuration tool, I'll
> take emacs in UTF-8 mode any day, thanks.

Agreed.  Switching to something else merely gives implementors an
opportunity to label the something else as unstable, or private, and
force use of a suitable configuration tool.  The existing config
language could be re-used, but something else may have other benefits
(for me, synergy with Solaris's SMF is one such benefit, and I need not
disclose what my address already discloses, that I'm at Sun
Microsystems, Inc., right? :)

Anyways, I'll get off this sub-thread now -- XML is beside the point of
the original post.

Nico
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