On Wed, 2006-22-03 at 08:22 +0100, Stefan Winter wrote:
Hi,
I understand that this change is what you want, but there MAY be someone depending on the existing behaviour. This change will then surely break their current working configuration. They can of course fix it by reconfiguring the server, taking this change into consideration, but that is NOT the way to do a stable release cycle.
My explanation was intended only to explain why packet handling gets a tiny little bit faster. But you are right, there is a very minimal impact: normal packets (with User-Name) are always passed through hints, this is unchanged. So, the only new behaviour is that packets without User-Name attribute are also passed through hints, which indeed is new. However, it would only break an existing configuration iff someone relies on the fact that his Accounting-On-Off packets are ignored in the hints run. I don't want to judge on that, but it sure sounds odd if your configuration relies on that.
The patch would add consistency where it wasn't before, which is a very good thing IMHO. But I also see your concerns.
Stefan The problem I mentioned, when this was brought up, was that the intention for doing this was to use hints for something it was not meant for.
I think it would be better to use hints as a template for a new module that does specifically what you want. If someone wants the functions the new module is designed for, they can configure it in pre-processing or where ever it is required. I don't use hints anymore, but other users who are not privy to the developers list may.