Re: [exim-dev] better support for macros

On Wed, 2005-03-16 at 10:48 +0000, Philip Hazel wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Mar 2005, Kjetil Torgrim Homme wrote:
>
> > the enclosed patch adds support for macro definitions in the sections
> > "acls", "authenticators", "routers" and "transports".
>
> <snip>
>
> > I would love to see this patch included upstream. thank you for your
> > consideration.
>
> While I am always happy to look at patches - I'll look at this one - I
> am wary about adding anything that increases the time spent processing
> the configuration file. Remember that Exim re-reads its configuration
> file *very frequently*. It is only the daemon that reads it once and
> then runs for ever. Other Exim processes are short-lived, and they all
> have to read the configuration when they start up.

fair point, but this time is dwarfed by SpamAssassin at most sites these
days. the patch I sent purposely scans over the macro name twice as I
don't think a loop of isalnum() over a dozen characters will show up on
anyone's profile, and I think the simplified code is worth that cost.
(I'll fix it if you want me to.) for users who don't use the added
functionality, the increased processing is only an extra isupper() for
each router/transport/acl.

> Having said that:
>
> (1) Over the lifetime of Exim, I have given in to people's requests and
> added stuff like macros and .include to the config, so I suppose this is
> no different. If you don't use it, it won't impact (much).
>
> (2) Processors get faster and faster and maybe the resources needed to
> process the config file are, in absolute terms, pretty trivial. So we
> might as well use them to make the sysadmin's life easier...

sounds like we are in total agreement :-) btw, let me know if you
accept the patch so that I can prepare a documentation patch to go with
it.

thanks again,
--
Kjetil T.
postmaster, University of Oslo