Hello George, Wednesday, February 16, 2005, 7:06:16 PM, you wrote:
>>GG> Rather than squelching custom site rules, I think it more >>GG> appropriate to verbosely report why rules become obsoleted (not >>GG> necessarily in the new ruleset). Maybe a changes file for each cf >>GG> file is appropriate? You cannot guarantee what or how anything is >>GG> done in a local config, let the admin who created it address the >>GG> changes too. >> >>The question then becomes, where to verbosely report these. Putting >>into the config file probably doesn't help, since if RDJ sees the >>--lint failure, it wipes out the config file that has the change >>report, and if RDJ doesn't see a --lint failure, then there's no >>reason for an admin to go looking for it. >> >>I'm open to suggestions. GG> I ended up looking but not finding a change log at: GG> http://www.rulesemporium.com/rules.htm You'll find them inside the file(s) changed. In this specific case, you'll find them inside 70_sare_header0.cf. However, compare the previous file's change history to the current one. You'll see that I removed a whole bunch of detail, because the change history was simply getting too long. I'm open to disagreement, but for these types of files, I don't think it's appropriate to have a change history longer than some of the files themselves. GG> Maybe the way RDJ does the roll back needs be addressed? I know version GG> 2 is nearing release, and this wouldn't be difficult to add: It could GG> check the cf file for a grep-able, commented, "this release" changes GG> entry, which may include a rules.htm#ChangesVerX url. GG> Then if some change broke your site, you get a likely indicator why, GG> right there beside the roll back commands, near the lint output. And if GG> your update is multiple revisions behind, you have a url to get started GG> on finding changes at the relevant revision. But that's assuming the reason --lint fails is explained in the change history. Past experience suggests that need not be the case -- --lint fails more often because of typo errors rather than because of intentional changes. GG> Actually, I like this proposed way of reporting changes a lot. I've GG> always wondered the point of email notifications, "ruleset x has GG> changed.." They kinda suggest I should do a diff and figure out if GG> everything is really okay. I'd just assume see a change log as part of GG> the notification that new rules have been loaded (or that lint prevented GG> those changes from happening). Not everyone uses RDJ. I personally prefer to do my rule changes by hand, after I've validated themselves against my own corpus. The email notifications are more for people like me than the people who use RDJ and want rule updates to be completely automatic. Bob Menschel
