[dev] missing conf.php

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Ruben van der Steenhoven <ruben_donotspamme at webmeesters.nl>:

| Hi all,
|
| ever so often, these mailinglists get the well-known question 'i am
| missing conf.php'.
| Now before you say: see (...)/docs/INSTALL, hear me out please.
|
| Wouldn't it be a good idea to provide all modules with a conf.php.dist,
| that contains one line telling the user that the file should be
| generated by the admin module.
|
| Imho, this would serve two goals:
| 1. You all would get less questions about the missing file, and

Could not disagree with you more here.  By not having the conf.php.dist file
there, we should be forcing readers to read INSTALL.  Putting information
specific to how to generate conf.php in conf.php.dist not only leads to
duplication of information, but it provides even _less_ motivation to read
the INSTALL file where the question is answered.  Not to mention you are
going to get people who would simply copy conf.php.dist to conf.php and
then wonder why the $conf variable can't be found...

Simply put, there really is no reason why a user shouldn't be reading the
INSTALL file.  Having an extra file in the config directory that says 'read
the INSTALL file' seems like overkill to me.  I believe we strive to
provide as clear documentation as possible, but there is really not much
you can do for those users who already ignore the documentation we have.

| 2. At least in my set-up the directory rights are set so, that the
| apache user cannot create the file, so when installing a new module, i
| would always have to go in as a superuser and create the file myself.

I would rather have to copy/paste into the config directory than have the
conf.php file be automatically written.  This would seem be a bit more
secure anyway.

michael

______________________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at bigworm.colorado.edu]
The University of Colorado at Boulder