Nicolas Williams' source environment variables

Steve Langasek vorlon at netexpress.net
Thu Feb 3 04:21:54 GMT 2000


On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Dan Kaminsky wrote:

> > On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Dan Kaminsky wrote:
> > 
> > > Rather than turning smb.conf into YASL(Yet Another Scripting Language),
> > > perhaps it'd be better to keep it hook based, but with a twist:
> > > 
> > > Presently, we include outside files.  Why not allow inclusion based upon
> > > outside executables?

> > no, no, and no.

> > use outside exes to _generate_ the scripts, off-line.

> If they're fully pregenerated, you lose alot of flexibility.  If you turn
> smb.conf into a new scripting language, you lose alot of ease of use.

> I really don't mind leaving smb.conf as an almost wholly variabled
> environment, if I can bounce out into an external script to determine the
> appropriate policy given a set of inputs.

> This isn't all that big of a deal, Luke.

One concern I have about including the output of executables is that this
means an additional fork()ing and exec()ing of a program for every such
include done--for every time smb.conf is read.  I imagine there are others
here who have a better idea than I of how much overhead this represents, and
perhaps you can put my mind at ease :), but at present, I would hesitate to
use such a feature for fear of a performance hit..

-Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer



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