Re: slapadd: which database to open

[Matthew Backes <mbackes@symas.com>]

> > What kind of breakage are you afraid of slipping through?  You'll  
> > know
> > if it's outside any of your suffixes, or if it spans two databases.
> > Though the latter only after the first has been modified.
>
> I know that one could find a way to make it work most times and spit  
> out
> some error messages if it's wrong. Indeed I'm in favor of smarter
> handling of command-line options if there's a single way to get it  
> right.
>
> But when implementing automagic one has to consider whether there  
> could
> be a significant amount of cases for which the user comes to the  
> mailing
> list asking silly questions because he don't understand the error
> message. In this particular case I'd vote for forcing the user to  
> learn
> how to use -n or -b.

Opening the correct db based on entries present in the file seems  
fairly reasonable.  I'd even consider re-opening different db's as  
necessary through the file if they include multiple suffixes, though  
that's more work.

As far as error messages, this removes the number of cases where  
someone would see a message, so it should help on the bad questions  
front.  While delivering simple messages is good, it's rather silly to  
present errors when we can clearly identify what the user wants, the  
semantics are unambiguous, and there is a straightforward path to  
implementation.

Matthew Backes
Symas Corporation
mbackes@symas.com