Re: Config (was Re: Red Rat 3 / IR Schema)

[Stuart Booth <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 07:24:01 -0000, patrick@xxxxxxx wrote:

>--- In xAP_developer@xxxxxxx, mcs101main@a... wrote:
>> I agree with Patrick that a single configuration server should not
>> be the singular solution.  I also feel that a hub is a hub is a
hub
>> and is nothing but a hub.  There are several xap applications that
>> provide hub functionality because of the limitations of multiple
>> xap applications on the same PC.  It would not be right to burden
>> them with configuration management.

>I'm not wild about the apps that also masquerade as hubs for a couple
>of reasons:
>
>- it could lead to weird, hard to diagnose issues if a particular app
>has an out of date or defective hub. Whether or not the end user sees
>issues then depends on the order in which he started the
>applications. Urgh.
>
>- currently it is not mandated for an app to include hub
>functionality (and doing so would lead to unnecessary bloat), so an
>end-user can't be certain that a hub has been started on a host
>without resorting to RTFM.

Okay, you're both talking about my applications here I think!! :-) So
far as I'm aware they're the only ones that do this. Somebody correct
me if I'm wrong.

I do agree with you on your point about out of step builds of things.
Indeed, "Urgh". But it does make things damn easy to get going!

In their defence the Hub protocol is built into xAPFramework, and as
far as all the applications themselves are aware, they actually
couldn't care less if they're a Hub or not. It's only the dedicated
Hubs (and Viewer to a certain degree) that take note of this
specifically to do different things.

I wouldn't want to separate it out, but I can see advantages and
disadvantages in my implementation. There's not really too much to a
Hub at the moment, but should that change in future, then I'd likely
revisit this and perhaps provide a full Hub protocol implementation in
a separate module from the xFx xAPTransport library to avoid the bloat
issue.

Also, it is possible with xFx apps to configure exactly how they start
up. 'twas an attempt to make things as easy to use as possible (we'll
skip over the fact that some of the older apps I've not updated in a
while still need .config file tweaking, thus weakening my argument
considerably ... ;-))) and I've always thought it worked rather well
actually.

I guess I've been fortunate in that the implementation has been fairly
static since it came out back in '02, and there are only 2 or perhaps
3 larger changes in this area in the past, oh, year or so I guess,
that might likely end up in that random startup scenario you describe,
Patrick. That is indeed a compelling argument though.

>I'm not sure I've fully understood this. My view is that there must
>be a universal mechanism for setting and retrieving application
>configuration in terms of the xAP messages that are exchanged to
>achieve configuration. The payload of the configuration messages
>(what is configured) will, of course, be application specific. There
>implementation of the configuration engine is a free-for-all, so long
>as it complies with the configuration messaging standard.

Just like the Hub protocol in fact. I know that we've both taken
slightly different approaches for various reasons, but they are both
interchangeable.

>[I'm not sure that mail client you use, Michael, but Yahoo seems to
>struggle with quoting it properly]

I too have similar problems. I use Agent here and for some reason it
just won't flow the lines of Michael's posts. That's why you tend to
get

66
> long long line spread over multiple lines in my reply

--

my reply
99

Not a problem, just an observation.

S
--
Stuart Booth <stuart@xxxxxxx>
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