Re: [squid-users] best way to merge old conf file into the new one so as to update it in place

On Wednesday 11 June 2003 02.39, Adam wrote:

> Thanks as always for your input. This idea of using a conf file
> consisting only of one's own comments and specific/active configs
> is an excellent dea - we do create a mini conf with grep for
> documentation. However, I like the self-documenting nature of the
> squid.conf file and since I have 2 admins who back me up on this
> project (as I them on others), we all appreciate the fact that all
> our changes/additions are adjacent the section with examples/docs.

I find this inline documentation is mostly of value during the initial
configuration.

Once you have a working configuraiton it is much more important to be
able to understand your configuration, not squid in general. By
removing the comments you get a short file which is easy to read and
understand, and have the opportunity to reorder things slightly to
have them grouped in a more logical order than you get if you
strictly follow the squid.conf.default layout, and it becomes natural
to write your own notes on why things are in a certain way.

Another big benefit from not having the documentation within the
squid.conf file is that you do not risk reading old documentation
after a later upgrade.

If there is anything you must change between different Squid version
"squid -k parse" is pretty good at telling you what you need to
change. In most cases the changes are additions of features where the
old configuration is still acceptable. In some rare cases (such as
the authentication rewrite in Squid-2.5 or transparent proxies in
Squid-3) old directives are replaced by completely new directives,
and in such case the old and new directives are documented in the
release notes.

Regards
Henrik

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