* where possible, the banishment of environment variables as configuration.
I have to say, I think this is a bad idea. What is it about environment variables do you find worthy of banishment? I can tell you a few of the reason I really like them: a) Code spent garnering values is minimal, I don't have to worry about acres of code spent parsing yet another config file format or the inevitable quirks and bugs in that code. It doesn't get much simpler than os.environ.get() b) I have tools to examine runtime environments which are external to the zope application and any of its limitations. If I wanna know what a particular value is, I can just find out using ps. I don't have to dig around in the zmi, or rely on any custom clients to query that data from a running instance. c) Environment variables lend themselves to nicely to modification by third party tools; I can set environment variables in shell scripts, python scripts, whatever--the paradigm is language agnostic. In particular I'm rather fond of using daemontools and its envdir program in conjunction with a custom z2.py replacement that lets me take advtanage of the excelent supervision and logging infrastucture provided by daemontools. Force me to use an external config file and its going to make this kind of thing more difficult to do. That said I know they aren't an end-all solution for all configuration needs, but just because they don't fit every need I don't see why they should be completely discounted. -- Jamie Heilman http://audible.transient.net/~jamie/ "You came all this way, without saying squat, and now you're trying to tell me a '56 Chevy can beat a '47 Buick in a dead quarter mile? I liked you better when you weren't saying squat kid." -Buddy