Re: [GNUnet-developers] /etc/gnunet.conf and ~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf

[Christian Grothoff]

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On Wednesday 10 September 2003 01:34 pm, Michael Shuey wrote:
> I'd like to have both a /etc/gnunet.conf and a ~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf - a
> complete config in /etc for machine-wide defaults (for networking and such)
> and a few overrides in users' homedirs for one or two variables (like
> GNUNET_HOME and the preferred nick for gnunet-chat).  Unfortunately, right
> now it looks like if I have a ~/.gnunet/gnunet.conf it must be complete
> (meaning I can't get defaults for most things from /etc/gnunet.conf).  If I
> leave out any variables I get an error.

Right.  In part, the assumption was that in practice there would be one 
gnunetd process running on any given host (as user "gnunet") and that 
individual users would just use clients to connect to that gnunetd service. 
Individual users would never have any distinct GNUNET_HOME for sharing -- 
after all, it's about sharing, so distributing the database of shared stuff 
over a dozen home directories makes not much sense.

Nevertheless, I buy the argument that individual users may want to set 
specific settings for the clients, such as the chat nickname. So the feature 
you're asking for makes sense.

> Is what I want currently possible, and I'm just missing something?  Or does
> gnunet rely on the last config file read to provide a complete
> configuration?  If so, is it worth my time to whip up a patch to do what I
> want or has this already changed in CVS?

You are right, and no, there's nothing for it in the CVS at the moment. I 
would suggest to look at src/util/parseconfig.c and add a special directive, 
say "@INCLUDE = FILENAME" (or something like that) which parseconfig would 
then interpret as "inline the given file here".  With that, it should be 
possible to just put "@INCLUDE = /etc/gnunet.conf" as the first line of a 
users configuration file -- and then all options that are defined in the 
users local configuration would override the system defaults, which is 
probably what we would want.

Happy hacking.

Christian
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