The UCL working group will discuss and develop a common set of keys for configuration files to be used throughout the base system, and plan for the implementation of UCL support in various utilities. The goal is to develop a template for all future configuration files that is human readable and writable, but is also hierarchical, expressive, and programmatically editable. The stretch goal is to develop a universal API for loading UCL configurations into the existing C structs used internally by the target application, to simplify implementing UCL in more places.

• Opening: What is UCL
• Presentation of work in progress: converting newsyslog and other tools in base to UCL
• Discuss common requirements for configuration files
• Discuss layering (/etc/defaults/foo.conf → /etc/foo.conf → /etc/foo.conf.d/*.conf → /usr/local/etc/foo.conf.d/*.conf)
• Develop a common set of grammar/keys to work across all configuration files ('enabled' activates/deactivates each block, allows disabling default configuration without modifying the default files, ala pkg)
• Discuss required features for management utilities (uclcmd)
• Identify additional targets to UCL-ify
• Develop a universal API for using libucl in various applications, simplify loading configuration into C structs (libfigpar?)

Allan's slides about converting the base system, and uclcmd

Vsevolod's slides about the limitations and future of libucl

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• libucl lacks some features that would be very useful. Some of those features are easier to add than others.
• libucl cannot handle unknown variables well
• libucl needs a way to preserve comments and macros during parsing
• Jonathan Anderson recommends an AST
• A number of additional files were identified as targets for UCL-ification