On 04/10/2010 02:31 AM, Juha Heinanen wrote:
since M4 has been already invented perhaps it would be
better to use
that for the above rather than use scarce developer resources to
reinvent the wheel.
In principle, I agree.
However, this very same argument could be made against features like
'include_file' and #!ifdef & friends, and some other things that have
made Kamailio 3.x much better than 1.x from a code management
perspective. These features have revolutionised our deployment,
standardisation and maintenance process.
It is true that with enough spiritual commitment, we could have
achieved them before by using m4. It would have allowed us to split
elements of configuration across many files, perform global
substitutions, etc. And yet, it was just too hard to get the
initiative to learn it and do it, especially since it appeared that
this approach would have been obsoleted by new Kamailio 3.x features
anyway.
My point is that those features served to simplify and somewhat
democratise the process of better code organisation, dynamism and
maintenance, even though there were other ways to achieve the same
objectives.
--
Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems LLC
1170 Peachtree Street
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