Re: config file formats

[Jasper Wallace <jasper%pointless.net@localhost>]

On Tue, 19 Jul 2011, David Holland wrote:

> Would anyone object to adopting a convention in which if the first
> line of a config file begins with "#@" it identifies the format?
> E.g. if we were to deploy a new syslog.conf format this year the first
> line of new-format syslogd config would be
> 
>    #@syslogd 2011
> 
> or something. Maybe the number should be the netbsd version, and/or
> maybe it should have "netbsd" in it.
> 
> There are a number of legacy formats we should be attempting to move
> away from; methods like this make backwards compat work, having a
> convention for it is an obvious plus, and I don't know of any existing
> such convention suitable for /etc.

Do we have good enough support for extended attributes that they would 
work instead?

(Thinking about it a bit more it might be too much like hard work, when 
you change a files format you have to remember to change the attribute 
with it, i can see people forgetting and that causing all kinds of 
issues).

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