Capabilities

Problem

Only plugins like dump and quickdump are able to represent any KeySet (as they are designed to do so). Limitations of other storage plugins are e.g., that not every structure of configuration is allowed.

Some of these limitations were documented infos/status, others were not.

Constraints

• tooling should be able to query which limitations exist

Assumptions

Considered Alternatives

• Implementing plugins that work around the limitations (e.g. escape the characters or rewrite directory values) is too complex and lead to new problems (e.g. escaping of the rewritten values and interactions of plugins, e.g. renaming and notification).
• Capabilities API was also found too complex, as application developers usually do not exactly know the requirements of their underlying format, especially if some parts of the configuration is extensible or derived from user-input.

Decision

Add infos/features/storage to document limitations of storage plugins. Ideally, storage plugins should throw an error in kdbSet for unrepresentable KeySets.

Elektra cannot guarantee that any configuration file format can be mounted anywhere. Developers, maintainers and administrators are responsible for what they mount. They need to test the setup.

Rationale

Implications

Related Decisions

• Base Name

Notes

See also #3504: