[RFC] xfs catalogues.d

[Ademar de Souza Reis Jr.]

Hi there.

xfs currently has its list of catalogues (font directories)
inside its configuration file (e.g. /usr/lib/X11/fs/config).

Font directories are added/removed by changing this configuration
file, usually calling an application such as chkconfig. On xfs
upgrades, it's necessary to validate the config file and import
the changes from the old configuration file to the new one.
As we all know, handling a config file automagically is quite
error prone.

I would like to improve this schema by implementing a dynamic
catalogues.d/ directory where one could just add files containing
the entries (similar to the mechanism used by several known
projects). This way it would be trivial to add/remove entries and
the upgrade scenario would be clean.

I would also change the chkconfig utility (used by most
Linux distributions, don't know about other OSes) to accept a new
cmdline option to handle the catalogues.d entries.

The change would keep backward compatibility (catalogues= would
still be accepted inside the config file and chkconfig would
still work the old way by default).

Comments? In particular, besides chkconfig, how else are
catalogues handled? Is there any other tool to optimize this
task?

Thanks and best regards,
  - Ademar

-- 
Ademar de Souza Reis Jr.
Mandriva Conectiva - http://www.mandriva.com.br

^[:wq!