Indeed, a coordination of these two efforts would be ideal. The OnSIP
Getting Started documentation was(is) well documented and shows
essentially a large configuration example with added options and
detailed information about the options themselves.
More than once, I found myself referring to it for both debugging what I
might have done wrong, and for an understanding of what configurations
options do what. The module documentation is one thing, but more often
than not, a lot more is needed than just a simple function definition in
order to truly understand how a function behaves and should be implemented.
Greger V. Teigre wrote:
Hi Nils,
Good initiative!
I think we need to coordinate our efforts so we avoid duplicate work.
ONsip.org and
iptel.org merged partly because we wanted to align the
SER - Getting Started configuration files with the development of SER.
As you probably have seen on the lists, the intention is to add the
document and the config files to the cvs (SER 2.0).
Most beginners of SER (and many OpenSER beginners) start out with the
SER - Getting Started document and configs. From what I have seen,
there are now many, many production configs out there using the basic
structure from the getting started files.
We have learned quite a lot about maintaining example configuration
files:
1. People need small pieces in order to understand how each feature is
implemented
2. Without an expert pre-integrating configs/features, many/most?
people struggle to integrate a feature into another config
3. Maintaining many config files quickly becomes an impossible task
We started out with a focus on the "getting started" and thus created
a document with commented config files. We made the config files
available standalone (ready to be run) and subsequently focused more
and more on maintaining the configuration files and add more features
and then let the comments/document come afterwards. Keeping
everything in sync was a problem. We had early decided to keep
everything in one common structure and let each config build on each
other (to incrementally add functionality). This helped us in making
sure everything worked and people didn't have to integrate small
examples into one big themselves.
Our biggest problem was to keep adding features and making sure that
we updated configs to new SER versions.
Based on these experiences, we have done the following:
- Migrated the document to docbook
- Created the m4 build system
(
http://www.iptel.org/ser/doc/buildsystem) which keeps the
configuration files WITH comments and allows auto-generation of the
commented config ready for inclusion in SER - Getting Started document
In creating the build system, I put emphasize on the capability to
maintain different configuration sets (called feature packages, ex.
gettingstarted) composed of different feature sets (helloworld, auth,
natrtpproxy etc), each consisting of a set of features (natdetection,
natmangling, etc). The configuration files are easier to maintain and
as added value, people can automatically generate their config file
based on an example with correct IP address, port etc. (BTW, I work on
allowing people to generate their config files directly from from
iptel.org)
This may sound complicated, but I believe a quick look at the doc
(
http://www.iptel.org/ser/doc/buildsystem) will quickly give you the
idea.
Currently, the helloworld version of SER - Getting Started has been
migrated to SER 2.0 and Alfred Heggestad and Ladislav have merged the
current ser.cfg config with the optimized NAT example, and we will try
to use that config as a starting point for a new NAT SER - Getting
Started configuration file.
I don't think everything should go into the SER - Getting Started
feature package (though we should at least avoid creating two versions
of exactly the same functionality), but I hope you will spend some
minutes to see how a new feature package in the build system can help
your goals. I will of course be happy to assist you (as I have waited
to see interest before documenting creating new feature packages).
g-)
Nils Ohlmeier wrote:
Hello everybody,
as we want to provide more examples for the configuration the
following the question came up:
Do you prefer
- one big example configuration
- probably harder to understand
- easier to maintain for us
- one example config file per "feature"
- probably easier to understand your desired "feature"
- you might have problems to integrate all your desired "features"
into one config without breaking anything
- harder to maintain for us, as we have to update several files :-)
As the configuration examples are indented to be for the community, I
would like to know what you prefer or if you see other options.
Thanks
Nils
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