New configuration backends for Samba 3 SoC project

[Gerald (Jerry) Carter]

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Mingwang,

This is probably one of the more interesting projects
from my perspective (mostly because I've been whining
about configuration bloat for a while).  First some
background.

I initially spoke with Avi about possibly using libelektra
(http://www.libelektra.org/) but I never got a chance to
try the work.  I know Avi started on some of it last month
but then hit a few issues.

I think the first challenge is to abstract the interface
used by Samba servers and tools to query values from
the config backend.  To make any move towards a richer
configuration backend, we will have to continue to
support a "legacy" smb.conf file.  I'm not as worried
about actually implementing this legacy support during
SoC, just keeping the requirements in the back of our
minds.  The advantage of using a library like libelektra
is that it abstracts the query/set calls from the actual
data storage.

Most of the lp_XXX() functions can be wrapped around
a simple query call.  The main hurdles are smb.conf
variables and the include parameter.

In an ideal world we could have a virtual registry
for configuration that could be pulled from multiple
data sources: advanced options in a registry (I know
I'll get flamed for that comment) and the admin friendly
ones in the normal configuration file/backend.

Even if we don't end up using libelektra, I'd like to
have an abstracted interface rather than hard coding
ldb calls.  And since ldb is still in flux some, it's
probably safer to localize the ldb calls as much as
possible.

Just some initial thoughts.




cheers, jerry
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"What man is a man who does not make the world better?"      --Balian
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