[asterisk-dev] Asterisk Usersconf

[Mark Spencer]

Fellow developers,
 	At the request of many people seeking easier management of 
Asterisk, I've been experimenting with the idea of "users" and have a 
branch called "usersconf" which can be checked out from:

http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/team/markster/usersconf

Please take a look at it and share your comments with me on or off list as 
I'm trying to figure out if this is a GoodThing(tm) or barking up the 
wrong tree entirely.

The concept basically is as follows:  users.conf is effectively shorthand 
for creating zap, sip, iax extensions, voicemail, manager, or other 
entries all in one place.  There is a "general" section for settings which 
can be overridden in non-general sections.  The concept is to create a way 
to create things with some level of consistency, so by just adding a 
users.conf entry, subject to the general and enumerated settings, you get 
something with common secrets, names, etc.  As it turns out, it's 
relatively little code change.  In terms of processing of entries, we'll 
take iax for an example...  First, "general" section of iax.conf is 
processed.  Secondly, any "users.conf" entries are passed through 
effectively the same logic (so long as 'hasiax=yes') as other iax friends. 
If there are other iax.conf entries, those are then processed.  If there 
is an iax peer, user, or friend declaration with the same name as a user, 
those changes are incremental over the user itself.

Let me know what you all think!

Mark