Whenever I am upgrading a wiki or telling a customer what files to backup, I am unhappy with the file structure in the ./conf folder. Mostly because global and local configuration files are not separated sufficiently enough.
It is not a big issue. But even when I know all the local files by heart, it still takes a while and some consideration to choose them.
Instead of this structure:
dokuwiki.php
local.php
acronyms.conf
acronyms.local.conf
acl.auth.php.dist
...
I propose a ./conf/local folder like this:
dokuwiki.php
local/dokuwiki.php
acronyms.conf
local/acronyms.conf
local/acl.auth.php
...
That way you never have to think twice again, you just need to copy the ./conf/local folder over to a new installation or backup.
Inside the DokuWiki package that folder could come as ./conf/_local or similar (to avoid overwriting as is done now by the addition of '.dist').
Then we could probably even add all those local files that are not in the distribution (like acronyms.local.conf, empty of course), so it is one step less to use them.
(from:
http://www.freelists.org/archives/dokuwiki/08-2008/msg00139.html)
Chris Smith added:
The "wiki farm" implementation requires changes to the configuration cascade to accommodate farm wide configuration options. I have an idea for implementation that should be compatible between the current layout and your new config layout and support the requirements of farms.