[c-nsp] Changes in defaults...

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

At 8:08 AM -0400 4/29/05, Rodney Dunn wrote:
>I know it's sorta a dumb question but it's something I'm
>trying to move forward.
>
>I'd like to see in the Release-notes for an IOS release
>a section that describes default changes in IOS.
>
>Would you find that useful?
>
>Sometimes we really need to make changes in defaults to harden
>the product or simply to make it better. IOS does not have
>a way to display all the defaults via the CLI unfortunately so
>some CLI tool is not an option. I'm not interested in discussing
>that as an issue. I'm simply looking for feedback on how much it
>would help and if you think it would be useful to document default
>changes in the Release Notes.

The various show config commands are essentially a decompiler of data 
structures, which build a set of configuration language statements 
that should have produced their states.  I understand that there are 
size limits to its code when running on the router, which is one 
reason all defaults don't show. There's also the practical matter 
that showing defaults could make configuration listings too long to 
read during operations.

I've often wondered, however, if the show config code could be ported 
to a UNIX machine, and that port given switches that enabled listing 
defaults. The practicality of this, I suppose, depends on how much of 
the grammar is table-driven, and the relationships of such tables to 
the release strategy.