Re: Proposal: Disable compression of newsyslog by default

On 25 Dec 2023, at 2:12, Xin Li wrote:

> On 2023-12-23 14:17, Mike Karels wrote:
>> On 23 Dec 2023, at 15:23, Craig Leres wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/23/23 06:52, Konstantin Belousov wrote:
>>>> This is strange change at best.  I have no opinion about the disabling
>>>> of compression of the rotated logs by default, but we already have knobs
>>>> to do that.  Adding a knob that disables (or enables) other knobs to work
>>>> is weird.
>>>
>>> I totally agree. This moves the compression knob from the config file to the command line. And what if the user wants some but not all files to be compressed? Or wants to use different compression with different log files?
>>
>> Another possibility would be to introduce some simple form of variables in
>> newsyslog.conf, replacing J by a variable reference, with the variable
>> being set near the beginning.  E.g.
>>
>> 	V=zstd (or just V= for none?)
>> 	... $V
>> 	... $V
>>
>> Then there would be one global change, and much easier changing of the
>> default.
>>
>> It would also be possible to add <include> /etc/newsyslog.local.conf at the
>> beginning, and set variables there, making changes to the default file less
>> painful in the future.
>
> I've implemented support of <compress> in https://reviews.freebsd.org/D43174 .  Let's don't add macro or variables to newsyslog.conf as it would be a nightmare for compatibility with other newsyslog variants of other BSDs.

Looks like there is a fair amount of divergence from NetBSD, at least;
I don't think compatibility with other BSDs is a significant factor.
Compatibility with older FreeBSD is a bigger consideration.

An intermediate possibility would be to add an option letter for the
default compression to be used in each entry, and use <compress> to set
that default.  It seems wrong to attempt to use <compress> zstd with option
letters like J; it's contradictory, if not confusing.  It's still a knob
to disable other knobs, although it is in the right file.

		Mike