[csw-maintainers] dovecot, conf.d directories, and SAMPLECONF

[Geoff Davis]

On 11/28/11 3:47 PM, Jake Goerzen wrote:
> (bits of original message snipped)
> I wanted to ask, do you know anything about the "conf.d" directory in 
> example-config?  In the dovecot 2.0 documentation "quick 
> configuration" it says to copy dovecot.conf and conf.d from the 
> example-config directory.  Should I handle this conf.d directory as a 
> SAMPLECONF?  or just the single dovecot.conf file as previously done?
>
If you understand Dovecot's configuration file format well enough, my 
advice would be to throw together a very minimal sample configuration 
file that is self-contained in a single file and that doesn't use conf.d.

This is a tough call. I started to update the FreeRADIUS packages and 
ran into a similar decision point. The FreeRADIUS sample config is 
pretty ridiculous - something like 30 files in all, with some submodules 
using a conf.d structure, and others using a modules-enabled 
modules-available structure. I just threw up my hands and let the user 
figure it out and set the daemon to not auto-start because SAMPLECONF 
was falling down trying to manage the whole mess, and I didn't know 
enough about FreeRADIUS to put together a minimalist configuration file. 
(Then I got distracted by $DAYJOB obligations and gave up on it altogether.)

I don't think SAMPLECONF is very well suited to conf.d structures 
because a user might want to just remove all of the sample configuration 
and have their own set of files in that directory. As far as I know, 
SAMPLECONF doesn't handle that case well at all during a package upgrade 
and puts whole new copies of the files in place, which is not what the 
user typically wants.

Geoff

CC: maintainers because there may be a MEGA_SAMPLECONF or something that 
I don't know about that handles conf.d setups better.