The usual convention has been to designate configuration files with
".config" or ".cfg". That still seems to pull quite a few out of the
filesystem. By convention they also should be in */etc/--not necessarily
/etc (sometimes it's more convenient to keep them in a directory structure
rooted with the application.)
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On Thu, 23 May 2013, Yasha Karant wrote:
> On 05/22/2013 10:59 PM, David G.Miller wrote:
>> Elias Persson <delreich@...> writes:
>> <SNIP>
>>> On 2013-05-22 17:45, Joseph Thomas Szep wrote:
>>>> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 08:06:47AM -0700, Yasha Karant wrote:
>>>>> Is there a single list of the various "stock" configuration files
>>>>> and directories used by the various applications that come with EL?
>>
>>> If it's config files you're interested in, `rpm -qc ...` should
>>> limit that to just files the packager considers config'able.
>>>
>>> Taking that one step further, this should get you a list of all
>>> such files:
>>>
>>> rpm -qac | grep -v -e '(contains no files)'
>>>
>>> Keep in mind though that what the packager considers to be a
>>> config file (or for some other reason has marked as such) does
>>> not always correspond to what normally would be considered such.
>>> I certainly wouldn't have thought of /var/lib/rpm/* as configs...
>>>
>>>
>> In rpmbuild speak configuration files typically have two characteristics:
>>
>> 1) The file will usually be modified after installation, and
>> 2) The modified file contains information that shouldn't be overwritten by
>> an update.
>>
>> What we think of as configuration data fits this criteria but so do lots of
>> other files. Probably a better name would be something like "user
>> configurable" or "configuration dependent." Classifying a file as a config
>> file also gives the user a way to do rpm --verify and filter files that are
>> expected to not match what was installed.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Dave
>>
>
> I agree -- "configuration dependent" modifiable would be a better
> description. At one time, these were straightforward to find, and often,
> the man page would list the names of each configuration file and ofter the
> functions thereof. The source code for the application typically would have
> a "comment" section that listed the internal layout of each such file, also
> typically a plain text file that could be modified with a plain text editor
> (e.g., vi). This sort of information is increasingly difficult to find, with
> some configuration files written as nominally plain text but in such schemes
> as XML.
>
> I have a suggestion that could be initiated in SL and perhaps then diffuse
> into other Linux varieties. This suggestion would NOT cause any loss of
> binary compatibility with other EL derivatives.
>
> The suggestion: a specific directory that serves as a repository (not a
> distribution repository, but one on a locally accessible host machine,
> including the immediate machine being used). Each application (say kile or
> vi) that has a configuration file would have a configuration-list file (say,
> kile-config) that contains the actual list of configuration files, both kept
> centrally within a system or for each user home directory, and, if possible,
> the use/content template of each such file. It would be up to the maintainer
> of the application to supply this configuration-list. Initially, there would
> be very few of these, but as time proceeds, there would be more contributions
> to this set of configuration-list files, ultimately addressing the problem.
>
> Yasha Karant
>
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