[Proftpd-devel] Configuration directive handling...

[TJ S. <tj...@di...>]

Hello, all.  In looking at Apache's mod_define and mod_macro modules,
which allow for some basic variable substitution and macro usage in
Apache's configuration file, I couldn't help but think that this would be
useful for ProFTPD, too.

However, unfortunately, the way proftpd currently handles processing of
configuration directives makes this a little hard to implement.  What
would be ideal, for the variable/macro substitutions, would be something
like how proftpd handles FTP commands: call PRE_CMD handlers, call CMD
handlers, call POST_CMD handlers.  If proftpd did this for configuration
directives, eg call PRE_CONF handlers, call CONF handlers, call POST_CONF
handlers, then a PRE_CONF handler could rewrite the line read in from the
configuration file, and perform the necessary substitution in the
directive arguments, before they were sent to the CONF handler.

Obviously, this sort of change would affect all current modules, and thus
belongs to the 1.3 design discussion, but...can anyone think of how this
might cause more problems than beneficial opportunities?

TJ

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