SetState suggestion (was Re: Ordering and cfengine 3)

[Alexander Jolk]

This has just a passing connection to the ordering problem, but I 
thought of a simple but useful extension of the SetState semantics:



> >    SetState("preserved_class",10,Preserve)
> >    SetState(non_preserved_class,60,Reset)
> >    UnsetState(myclass)

Could we have states that preserved a numerical or textual value as 
well?  Something like
        SetState("preserved_value",10,Value,"5")
        SetState("preserved_value",10,Value,"$(preserved_value)+4")
so that later on, one can do
        do_action = ( GreaterThan($(preserved_value),10) )
and of course clear the value once the corrective action has been done.

This would be useful for fuzzy-logic type actions; I thought of it in 
the context of copying a large directory tree: I run the copy anyway 
once a day, but if one or more crucial files were missing, I would run 
it earlier, depending on the number of missing files.

Does that strike anyone as useful?

Alex



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Alexander Jolk         /         BUF Compagnie
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