[dev] default backends

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:

> Zitat von Rui Carneiro <rui.carneiro at portugalmail.net>:
>
>> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:50 PM, Ronan SALMON <rsalmon at mbpgroup.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks for this example that clearly shows why the old way was not perfect
>>>> and the new way is much better. After these changes, what you to is:
>>>> 1. Update the Horde tree.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I agree with Jan here. I find the *.local.php files really handy.
>>> Especially when you will upgrade Horde and Horde apps, you'll automatically
>>> get the new settings.
>>
>>
>> This is not necessarily good .
>>
>> The following example might not be the best one, but here it goes:
>> - The current default for $_prefs['initial_application'] is 'horde'. When I
>> first installed horde I checked prefs and this value was ok for me so I
>> didn't overwrite this pref on prefs.local.php.
>> - Later on Horde Team decided to change the initial application to 'imp'.
>> Now, I end up with an installation where the initial app is 'imp' (that I
>> might not even have installed).
>>
>> To avoid this problem we will need to do the following steps:
>> 1- Backup all config/*.php files
>> 2- Pull horde code
>> 3- Compare every single php with the new ones
>> 4- Update our *.local.php with our new defaults.
>>
>> This is almost the procedure that we do now with the exception that we don't
>> need to backup config/*.php files.
>
> This is really a constructed example IMO. If we change some defaults  
> in configuration file, we do this for a good reason. You might  
> happen to disagree, but chances are good that our changes make sense.

This is the reasoning I find tremendously flawed.  We as Horde  
developers might think it makes all the sense in the world, but a  
local admin might not.  The burden should be on the ADMIN, not us, to  
change the configuration of a running system.

Not to mention the security concerns.  We ship a configuration default  
that we think makes sense, and it turns out that it opens a security  
hole on my particular installation.

michael

-- 
___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]