Config File Standards

[EndianX]

Are there any standards for application configuration files on Linux? Furthermore, are there any libraries available to work with those formats?

Basically, is there a lib I could use to create my own apache-style configuration file, or something along those lines?

Thanks,

Dave

[Thrillhouse]

What kind of application are we talking about here? Would a .conf file be sufficient or do you need something more sophisticated?

I'm not sure about C/C++ but if you're using Java, there are tons of options out there if you're willing to go with XML. JAXB is one but if you're familiar with Apache, you might also be familiar with xerces which is a very nice XML parser for Java. Once you get the framework built with Xerces, it's almost a trivial task to parse a config.

[drl]

Hi.

Advice that I follow:

Don't use XML as your configuration file format. It may be
human-readable, but it's almost never human-understandable, and
the ratio of mark-up to content is vastly too high.

All three of these alternatives [ Config::{General,Std,Tiny} ]
allow you to read configuration files into an internal data
structure, update that data structure, and then write it back out
in the appropriate configuration file syntax.

Perl Best Practices, D Conway, O'Reilly, 2005; page 445 ff.

cheers, drl

[EndianX]

Thanks guys.

XML is a possibility, but I rarely see it used. I'm hoping for something more common.

Config::{General,Std,Tiny} sounds great, but perl specific. Anybody know of something similar for C?

Thanks again,

Dave

[drl]

Hi.

Never used it, but:

Description: Configuration file parser library - runtime files
 dot.conf is a simple-to-use and powerful configuration-file parser
 library written in C. The configuration files created for dot.conf
 look very similar to those used by the Apache Webserver. Even
 Container-Directives known from httpd.conf can easily be used in the
 exact same manner as for Apache-Modules. It supports various types of
 arguments, dynamically loadable modules that create their own
 configuration options on-the-fly, a here-documents feature to pass
 very long ARG_STR data to your app, and on-the-fly inclusion of
 additional config files.
Tag: devel::library, implemented-in::c, role::shared-lib, use::configuring

-- apt-cache show libdotconf1.0

On Debian:

apt-cache search config|grep '^lib'|grep -v perl

Produces almost 300 hits, but includes Ruby, Java, etc. libraries ... cheers, drl

[Thrillhouse]

Hi.

Advice that I follow:
Quote:
Don't use XML as your configuration file format. It may be
human-readable, but it's almost never human-understandable, and
the ratio of mark-up to content is vastly too high.

That may be true for Perl but I still believe XML is a viable alternative for Java applications. Yes, there is some markup in XML but that markup provides some nice functionality that's not easily provided by other implementations. Besides, the extra markup in most cases probably does not even amount to 1k.

Also, I find XML to be no less understandable than other formats. And what's even more important is that the config is application-understandable which is certainly true of XML where config values are clearly delimited, as opposed to other formats where they may not be.

Anyways, EndianX, I hope you find what you're looking for.