Re: processing order, preprocessing, etc.

[Mark . Burgess]

The documentation is all at www.cfengine.org - all these questions
are answered there,

cheers,
M


On 22 Dec, Luke A. Kanies wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to understand how cfengine works, and how I might use it, and
> I'm having trouble understanding how it processes its config files.  Is
> this documented well anywhere?
> 
> For instance, what's the affect of having multiple control sections in the
> same file?  Is it equivalent to a single control section?  Are all of the
> control sections processed, and then the other sections, or is it all just
> done linearly?  Is everything prepocessed, and then executed, such that
> the last variable assignment or class definition is what matters, or can
> variable assignment and then reassignment in a config make a difference?
> 
> What about if I import configs?  I know that the parent file is parsed
> entirely before the child is, but are the children all parsed in the
> specified order every time?  What if I have a "shellcommands" section in
> the parent, and a control section in each child which sets a variable that
> the parent "shellcommands" section uses and then lists "shellcommands" in 
> the actionsequence; will shellcommands be run for each child file, with
> that file's variable setting, or just once with the last setting, or for
> each child but with the last setting?
> 
> Is there documentation I can read that describes this without me having to
> test every case?
> 
> If I have a control section that looks like the following:
> 
> control:
>       actionsequence = ( shellcommands )
>       variable = ( true )
> 
> and a "shellcommands" section which uses that variable:
> 
> shellcommands:
>       "/bin/echo $(variable) > /tmp/testing"
> 
> What happens if I later reassign that variable?  (Can I only assign
> variables in control sections or modules?)  Will the shellcommands section
> be run again?  From initial testing, it looks like I have to redefine the
> shellcommands section, even though I haven't changed it.  That implies
> that the config is parsed once and variables are interpolated in that
> step, rather than the section being compiled with the reference to the
> variable intact.  Is this so?
> 
> Anyway, if anyone has pointers on this whole process, and maybe where it's
> documented, that would be great.
> 
> Thanks,
> Luke
> 



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