[dev] default backends

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:

> Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:
>
>> Zitat von Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:
>>
>>> - Why are we forcing changes to be in the *.local.php files  
>>> anyway?  This only makes sense if installing from git.  Most users  
>>> will be directly editing the default files and this isn't a bad  
>>> thing.  If we are concerned about changing/adding default values  
>>> when upgrading, I don't believe this has really been a problem in  
>>> the past.
>>
>> The reasons for this are:
>> - To simplify installation. Having admins going to each  
>> application's config/ directory and copying each and every .dist  
>> files is an uncecessary step.
>
> But in practical terms, you are still requiring this.  Using the IMP  
> backends file as an example, the default is useful to quickly try  
> out the application.  But I would say that easily more than 50% of  
> the people won't want to use the defaults as they move to  
> production.  (As an aside, the default for IMP is broken right now  
> for any RFC 3501 compliant IMAP server since plaintext logins MUST  
> be disabled by default).  So they are still going to need to go to  
> the config file, copy over the file to local.php, and edit it.
>
>> - To simplify configuration. If we have sane defaults 99% of the  
>> admins won't change anything in any configuration file.
>
> I agree with this, but this is only important on the initial install  
> not an upgrade.
>
> And I still maintain that, for something like backends.php in IMP,  
> it is now MORE difficult to make configuration changes.  It is now  
> at least a 3-step process to add an IMAP backend (create  
> backends.local.php if not already existing; create entry; login to  
> Horde as admin; activate server in config screen (which may require  
> cut/paste into a terminal window)).  And it is at least a 2-step  
> process to activate an IMAP backend that already exists - because  
> going to the web config page, how am I supposed to know what  
> "Advanced IMAP Server" means?  What server exactly am I activating?   
> It is necessary to login to the server and visually inspect the  
> backends.php file.
>
> You could obviously rewrite the config code to show more details in  
> the config screen, but at that point you might as well just move the  
> backends configuration into the config file anyway.
>
> My alternative: I would like to see activation of the servers occur  
> in the config file itself (e.g. what I committed to IMP a few days  
> ago).

Here I'm with Michael - this confused me when I updated Turba. I think  
having an 'active' boolean in the array would be great, and could  
easily be overridden in the .local.php file without editing the main  
file - everything is disabled in the main file, for example, and  
things are selectively enabled in *.local.php. Or vice versa, etc.

-chuck