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root/i-scream/projects/cms/documentation/minutes/minutes-20001116.txt
Revision: 1.2
Committed: Thu Nov 16 18:35:30 2000 UTC (23 years, 4 months ago) by tdb
Content type: text/plain
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.1: +86 -25 lines
Log Message:
Finalised the minutes as far as I can. Hopefully ajm4 will clarify some of his
ideas.

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 tdb 1.2 Minutes of meeting 16/11/00 @ 2pm
2     Location: Eliot College E3E Room 8 and
3     UKC Computer Science Meeting Room
4    
5     Present: ajm4, tdb1
6     Absent: None
7    
8     Another sub-meeting where a few design decisions were made
9     regarding the core of the system, namely logging and
10     configuration.
11    
12     Firstly the idea of verbosity of logging messages was
13     finalised, and later implemented. The following levels are
14     currently supported my the write method of the logger, which
15     can be accessed as follows.
16    
17     Logger.write(String source, int verbosity, String message);
18    
19     Logger.FATAL - (0) Fatal or Critical Errors
20     Logger.ERROR - (1) All Errors
21     Logger.WARNING - (2) Warnings
22     Logger.SYSMSG - (3) System Component messages
23     Logger.SYSINIT - (4) System Component initialisation
24     Logger.DEBUG - (5) All debugging messages
25    
26     Although these are only integer values they should always be
27     reference by their name on the left. This allows for easier
28     reading of code, and greater expandability.
29    
30     Next, still on the logging system, a need was found for a
31     logger which allowed both logging to the screen and logging
32     to a file, preferably with independant verbosity levels. It
33     was decided that a multi-logger should be written that
34     supported both features (using the existing classes).
35    
36    
37     The configuration system was also under review. There seems
38     to be a need for default config files, grouping of configs,
39     and hierarchical includes. These features will all be
40     implemented allowing a greater degree of control over the
41     system configuration, whilst retaining a simple and central
42     point of management.
43    
44     It was decided that the structure of the configuration would
45     be as follows;
46    
47     CONFROOT/
48     system.conf
49     hosts.conf
50     clients.conf
51     HOSTS/
52     host-hostname.domain.conf
53     CLIENTS/
54     client-somename.conf
55    
56     system.conf is a system wide configuration file (for the
57     logger and so on), whilst the hosts.conf and clients.conf
58     are default configurations for hosts and clients
59     respectively. The HOSTS and CLIENTS subdirectories contain
60     individual configuration files, and possibly group files.
61     The filenames are not yet final.
62    
63     The intended use of the system is that the configuration
64     system, when asked for a property, would first look in an
65     individual host (or client) configuration file. If it failed
66     to find it there it would then try the default file, and
67     finally failing that it would return null.
68    
69     Includes would also fit into this structure, although it
70     isn't entirely clear (to me at least) how this whole
71     structure fits together, with overriding an so on. Circular
72     includes have been thought of, and will be dealt with.
73    
74    
75     Finally, it was noted that there were still problems with
76     the initial configuration of the system - ie. how to
77     configure the configuration system. Various ideas were
78     suggested including passing parameters on the commandline,
79     or an initialisation configuration file.
80    
81    
82     The configuration plans above are to be considered and
83     implemented by ajm4, hopefully by Monday. tdb1 will work on
84     the logging side of the system.
85 tdb 1.1
86 tdb 1.2 Next full meeting is arranged for Monday, and the meeting
87     room is booked from 10am-12pm and 2pm-5pm.