Hi Robert,

On Mon, 2008-10-20 at 08:47 -0700, Fat Bear Incorporated - Pound Mailing
List wrote:

Is there any "Include" directive for pound such as in Apache?  If not, 
can it be added?  This would really help us better manage Pound in a 
virtual hosting environment.  Also, just like Apache, I would like the 
ability for included files to also use Include directives.  With this 
addition, I will be able to add Pound support to Virtualmin, a feature 
that I wish to develop.


Adding an "include" directive is not difficult, but its use is
questionable: after all, Pound does NOT read the config file after
starting. Are you sure that a simple shell script to concatenate your
files before starting Pound (perhaps with m4) would not be enough?

Using m4 is an interesting workaround. The downsides of this are both technical and business related:

Technical: The deployment of Pound is not portable. That is, we cannot then migrate Pound configuration files from one of our servers to another without being part of the Pound software deployment process. We'd minimally need to modify /etc/init.d/pound so that our changes are applied before starting Pound each time. And, we'd need to install our scripts that run m4, check for errors (e.g., missing files, recursion loops, etc.), and take appropriate action if errors are found (as simple as returning an error status so that "service pound start" fails).
Business: Especially for businesses other than small businesses, it is important that risks be mitigated. The loose coupling of two pieces of software introduces risk. It would be better to have one piece of software that can be QE tested and deployed.

So, while the workaround is certainly technically possible, it would not be a desirable solution for enterprise environments. Pound deserves to be Enterprise Grade.

As a side note, it would be a desirable feature that to have Pound capable of re-reading configuration files without the service going down (e.g., initiated with a HUP signal). Doing "service pound restart" is always a bit troubling... there is a window in which the server will fail to honor requests that always makes me cringe.

Thanks,
Steve Amerige
Fat Bear Incorporated