[dev] Seamless/streamlined configuring/upgrading Horde/apps

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Gunnar Wrobel <p at rdus.de>:

> Hi Chuck,
>
> Quoting Chuck Hagenbuch <chuck at horde.org>:
>
>> Quoting Josh Endries <josh at endries.org>:
>>
>>> Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:
>>>> - Until now, it's perfectly possible to run Horde without a  
>>>> database. Requiring a database for configuration would break  
>>>> this. Granted, there won't be many people out there still using  
>>>> Horde without a DB, since they will miss a lot of features, but  
>>>> still.
>>>
>>> Yeah, I thought about this. I think one would be hard pressed to  
>>> find someone running Horde without a DB, but it's a value call as  
>>> to whether or not you want to support that environment. It's hard  
>>> to justify, IMHO, with sqlite available, but I wouldn't be  
>>> surprised if others thought differently.
>>
>> I'd like to be able to have a base config that's in the filesystem,  
>> with additional policies on top of it. This would let someone who  
>> needed the flexibility of PHP configuration use it, but would also  
>> let us build a db-based config on top of it as "better for most  
>> people" experience.
>>
>>>> Maybe different storage backends for configurations are an  
>>>> option, so you can pick between storing the configuration in db  
>>>> vs. php files.
>>>
>>> Another semi-alternative could be allowing config files to exist  
>>> elsewhere. Instead of looking in conf/, check Array(/etc/horde,  
>>> /etc/horde/$app, /usr/local/etc/horde, ./conf) or something like  
>>> that. This would allow drop-in replacements (or side-by-side  
>>> replacements), if one hasn't customized very heavily.
>>
>> This would be covered by the policy idea above, fwiw. There's some  
>> musing in the wiki about this under the name Horde_Policy, but it's  
>> a bit more complicated than we probably ultimately need, and needs  
>> to be revisited.
>
> I'm really interested in this configuration topic as this has been a  
> long standing problem for the Kolab Server.  I think I should be  
> able to pick this topic up and bring Horde_Policy or Horde_Config to  
> life. Because of time constraint on my side it would still have to  
> wait until 22.11.10. But if you'd direct me a little bit into the  
> right direction it should be possible to work on this topic then.  
> Does that sound reasonable / doable?

Sure! Happy to. Just let me know when.

-chuck