[WWdevel] Config module questions

[John J. <jj...@as...>]

Hi,

There was previous discussion of a web-based course configuration 
module.  I have a draft of this, but also a couple of questions.

First, the module knows what values can be configured (and how) via one 
variable which looks like this:

[['General',
        { var => 'sessionKeyTimeout',
          doc => 'Inactivity time before a user is required to login 
again.',
          doc2 => 'Length of inactivity, in seconds, before a user is 
required to login again.',
          type => 'simple'},
        { var => 'courseFiles{course_info}',
          doc => 'Name of course information file',
          doc2 => 'Name of course information file (located in the 
templates directory)',
          type => 'simple'}],
    ['Permissions',
        { var => 'permissionLevels{login}',
          doc => 'Allowed to login to the course',
          type => 'permission'}, ...]]

Adding variables which can be configured will amount to adding entries 
to this constant.  The first question is, where should this go?  Should 
it be a constant in the new module, or should it be in Constants.pm, in 
which case configuration would be "configurable".  Both ways are easy to 
work with, so I don't really care myself.

The saving of information is done at the end of course.conf after a 
comment line it adds as a separator.  Writing to course.conf will mean 
preserving the stuff above its separator, and then writing values which 
are needed below the separator.

To know what values to write, the module will figure out what the system 
defaults are, the values for this course, and the values for "this 
course minus anything previously set by this module".  The last one is 
needed to prevent odd behaviour if course.conf differs from the system 
default in its upper part and the user switches back to the system 
default.  This may be a rare occurance, but if we can check for it, we 
might as well.

I am getting the values of variables by firing up multiple course 
environments.  You have the current course for free, and one can easily 
get the system defaults by WeBWorK::ContentGenerator->new with no course 
specified.

But, to easily know what the values would be if we only had the top part 
of course.conf, I would like to be able to specify the course.conf file 
while creating a new CourseEnvironment object.  Then I could write the 
top half of course.conf to a file named something like 
course-config-tmp.conf and use it for a new course environment.  I want 
to use that to create a course environment, and then delete it.  So far, 
my attempts have failed (to give the current course as the course name 
but to have course-config-tmp.conf be used as the course configuration 
file). 

I could work around it by making a copy of course.conf, replacing it 
with the top half, creating a course environment, then moving the 
original course.conf back into place, but I would rather not make so 
many changes to course.conf.

So, is there a way to have WeBWorK::CourseEnvironment->new be tolded the 
name of the course configuration file for the current invocation?

If not, would anyone mind if I added that feature to 
CourseEnvironment.pm (specified through the hash reference way of 
specifying arguments)?

Of course, other comments/suggestions are welcome.

John