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On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 11:04:47PM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>  Jared D. McNeill skrev:
> > Have you ever opened one of our plist files with a text editor before?
> > Give me a break.
>=20
>  Well, the suggested external storage format was XML, but it might be=20
>  something binary (as has been hinted), or some even more tricky format t=
o=20
>  get right.
>  And that is where I might be getting into problems if my system is borke=
d=20
>  out enough that I can't even run a text editor.
>  cat is my friend.

If your system is this horked, you boot from your altroot partition,
or from alternate boot media (a rescue/install/live cd, usb widget,
netboot, or whatever's appropriate).  You use an environment where you
trust the integrity of the tools (even if the tool is cat) to not make
the problem worse.

Proplib plists do not seek to change this basic fact of system
administration practice, and changing the file format is irrelevant
and won't change it either.

Designing a system that is fragile or robust in the face of corruption
of various properties and their dependencies that are used early in
boot is a separate task.  Proplib offers opportunities both ways here
(well used, more on the robustness side), but I think we should not
assume developers are trying to make netbsd more fragile.

--
Dan.
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