Re: [htdig-dev] Questions about htdig-3.2.0b3/htcommon/defaults.cc

[Geoff H. <ghu...@ws...>]

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Brian White wrote:

> I was looking at defaults.cc and I was wondering if
> it might be better managing the info as an XML file
> and then using that as a basis for generating
> defaults.cc and the HTML docs.

Yes, this would actually be quite wonderful. Currently, it's hard to
"validate" changes you make to defaults.cc. It's also a minor pain to
insert and format HTML, since it has to be properly escaped. (No, it's not
a big deal, but XML would obviously be easier.)

> Disadvantages
>    * Part of the build process for exexcutabe would require
>      perl to exist

No, not really. We have lots of "autogenerated" files in 3.2. You'd only
need Perl if you modified defaults.xml and needed to generate the new
defaults.cc.

>    * After rabbiting on like this I now have to decide
>      if I willing to put my money where my mouth is.....

Yes, now that's the question. :-)

Formatting defaults.cc into defaults.xml isn't hard and I'd be glad to do
that with some emacs macros. But I'd be glad to accept this change if you
(or someone) will write the defaults_generate.pl script. Ideally the
script would have some nice error-checking to tell you if you've left out
a field, etc.

--
-Geoff Hutchison
Williams Students Online
http://wso.williams.edu/