[Opensim-dev] Ini file(s) loading

Thu Mar 5 00:14:03 UTC 2009

Well I only inserted the loading from the config folder, inbetween the two existing steps. It has always been that the 'masterini' file was loaded first (if one was given as a argument) and then opensim.ini (or whatever was set with -inifile) was loaded. 

The original idea behind the master being that it could be a master file for say a whole grid, while each one had some local changes in the bin\opensim.ini. 

But I agree that it can be confusing, especially with the chosen names. So maybe we do need to rethink that. 

--- On Wed, 4/3/09, Sean Hennessee <sean at uci.edu> wrote:
From: Sean Hennessee <sean at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] Ini file(s) loading
To: michaelwri22 at yahoo.co.uk, opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
Date: Wednesday, 4 March, 2009, 10:37 PM

Yay!! +1

Updating ini files is often a pain. This is an excellent step in the
right direction.

In this scenario, my suggestion/preference would be to have the
bin/config directory contain all the SVN default values, (any number of
files), with NO bin/opensim.ini file present by default. Then I could
create a bin/opensim.ini file as a very small set of overriding values
specific to my grids. The inimaster really wouldn't be used since it
would always get overwritten.

Below are my suggestions instead of using this parsing order.

Looking at the three steps, I'm not sure I understand the logic of the
order chosen. The 'inimaster' sounds like it should be the "master" and
not ever be overwritten, i.e. it should be parsed last. To keep things
at least more familiar to what they are now, I would prefer that the
bin/opensim.ini file be the same one it is now, the default one that
comes with the SVN, and parsed first. The bin/config directory would
then be the second set of ini's parsed to allow my multiple ini files
to override the standard default. Then, if one specifically identifies
an inimaster, that should override everything else, especially since
you have to specify it on the command line. My line of thinking is that
if you are specifically saying "use this inimaster" on the command line
that would mean you really want to use it only, as in a testing
scenario without having to worry about default/other overrides. IIRC
other linux/server type programs, like sendmail, behave similar to this.

It might also be nice to have an "include" type of statement in the ini
file/url allowing you to reference files/urls without having them in a
special location as well as specifying the order you want them read
instead of having to make them alphabetical for order.

Anyway, my OS$2. And thanks for working on this!

Peace,

Sean

MW wrote:

        Last week, I added the ability for opensim to search a
folder for ini files and load (and merge together) all of those files. 

By default it will look for the folder 'bin\config' and search that for
.ini files. The folder it searches can be changed by using the command
line argument -inidirectory=<path>.

So now our ini loading is a three step process:

Step 1: If the -inimaster=<filepath or url> command line argument
was used, load that file/url.

Step 2: Then check if the config directory (default 'bin\config' or one
set by -inidirectory=<path>)  exists and search that folder for
ini files and load them. They are merged on top of the inimaster file.
So any duplicate entries will be overwrote.

Step 3: Load the inifile, which by default is 'bin\opensim.ini' but can
be changed by using the -inifile=<filepath or url> command line
argument. This again is merged on top of all previous settings so will
overwrite the older (from previous steps) settings.

Now the question is how we should set things up in SVN as the default.
It would be nice to split up the opensim.ini, into multiple ini files
in the config directory. And then just have a small opensim.ini that
contains the values likely to change ofter, like network settings etc. 

But because the config directory overwrites the master file, this could
cause problems for people who have already set things up for using a
master file/url. Of course the simple solution for them would be just
to delete the config directory.

But anyway what does everyone think? 

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-- 

Sean Hennessee
Central Computing Support
Network & Academic Computing Services
UC Irvine

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