[asterisk-users] Using XML for configuration management, single-source-of-truth, etc.

[Philip Prindeville]

I'm starting work on some provisioning tools to simplify plugging in and 
configuring hard SIP handsets and conference bridges (maybe eventually 
MPEG-4 PoE video cameras that speak SIP as well).

Issue is that I'd like to glean as much information out of the 
configuration files...  but don't want to write a whole new parser to do 
it (especially not one that understands templates and macros).

For instance, from the voicemail.conf, extensions.conf, and sip.conf 
files, I should be able to generate 90% of the configuration state 
needed for provisioning an out-of-the-box Sipura SPA941...  if only 
those files were in some more parsable format, like XML.

How much effort would it be to add an application that traverses the 
configuration state and writes it out as an XML flat file?

Or perhaps at some point in the future, Asterisk's configuration files 
could be represented as XML natively (did someone in the back row just 
show "gconf"???).

I'm a relative newbie, so if I'm missing something obvious or there's 
been a religious war on the subject in the past, apologies...

-Philip