[Web-SIG] WSGI adoption

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 06:14 PM 11/25/04 -0500, Peter Hunt wrote:
>Regarding configuration file format, I still think that we should use
>Python source, as it is easy to parse and easy to specify advanced
>configuration information. This has already been shown to work: just
>look at distutils setup scripts.

Distutils setup scripts have a different audience: Python programmers.  The 
audience for editing a WSGI application deployment file would include 
end-users, some of whom might like to use some sort of GUI administration 
tool to do the editing.


>End user editability: we're talking about x = y vs. x = "y" here.

Don't forget escaping of quotes, case-sensitivity, and booleans, just for 
starters.  These are all areas where ConfigParser beats Python hands-down 
for non-programmer users.


>I
>think that Python source code is just as readable as ConfigParser.
>
>Sectionability: section.option = "value"

And where is 'section' going to come from?

Mind you, I'm not married to ConfigParser, but so far it seems to be the 
best thing, short of defining some new format of our own.  (Which I don't 
think is such a hot idea.)


>I think a more important issue is how they will be deployed. Each
>configuration file should specify three things: "before", "after", and
>"middleware". "middleware" is the 'name' of the middleware that this
>file configures. "before" is a list of the _config files_ which
>specify middleware that will be called before the one being defined.
>"after" is the same, except of middleware which will be called after.

Sorry, I don't understand this.  Please define what you mean by "called 
before" and "called after".  I also don't get what the 'name' is for.  What 
do you do with it?