configuration

Hi, Different code bases have different ways of configuring their classes/applications/whatever. PHPDoc has hardcoded path names in its index.php file for example, while others have a ascii text config file, some have a PHP script setting global variables, constants or whatever. I think it's time to find a standard way of giving applications parameters without having to modify library code. To start with, I suggest having a "pear_config = /path/to/pear.ini" directive in php.ini (that can also be set in .htaccess files) that points people to a configuration file, and partition this file with the same name space as we use in PEAR itself. Example pear.ini file: [PEAR_Installer] docdir = "/usr/share/doc/pear" extdir = "/usr/lib/php/20001222" phpdir = "/usr/share/php/pear" [XML_RPC] http_proxy = "http://mydomain.com:3128/" ...and so on. To access the configuration we can either use ini_get() or make a new set of pear_ini_* functions. (I don't remember if PHP's ini parser can use the sections for namespacing, if not it'll be "Net_Socket.http_proxy" etc.) Cascading configuration like this would be very useful too, but it should be optional for high-traffic sites. Opinions? - Stig -- Stig Sæther Bakken <ssb@fast.no> Fast Search & Transfer ASA, Trondheim, Norway