On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Brad Nicholes wrote:
Maybe I am jumping in here out of turn, but let me ask the obvious question. Why would we want to split the standard base httpd.conf file up into multiple files? Doesn't this end up just confusing the average user? One thing that I always tell new users of Apache is that rather than trying to understand the entire alpabetical list of directives in the httpd docs, go read the comments in the standard httpd.conf file. This gives them a good idea of what the base set of directives are and how they are used in a working context. For newbies reading a single .conf file seems easier to understand than trying to trace through multiple .conf files just to figure out the big picture. For those that are Apache experts, they have already rewritten and rearchitected the the httpd.conf file to fit their needs so they don't care. I can understand splitting dead or rarely used directives out, but it seems much easier to read as a single file. Maybe just some additional formatting and comments to distinguish MPM directives from Language from Vhosts, etc. is needed.
I agree entirely with the main sentiment. The idea here is not to create a multi-file mess, but instead to create a much simpler httpd.conf that contains only the stuff that users really need. That is the only config file that will be active by default, and the only one new users need to read at the start.
But then users who need more advanced stuff---or who simply want to explore the capabilities of apache---need to have good examples too. Those examples are kept in separate config files in a separate directory. I provided commented-out Include directives, but users who prefer can simply copy the examples directly into httpd.conf.
I guess my fundemental disagreement with you is that I don't believe that the current httpd.conf is salvagable by adding more comments or structure. The comments in that file are already quite verbose, and the file is just too darn long and complicated to be easily digested. If you can suggest a better compromise solution, I am very interested.
Joshua.
