Then one day I thought about this and well, using a proprietary website to produce and manage a free software project makes…well…no sense. So then I started looking at the alternatives. I landed on Savannah. My first Savannah project was GoldenPod. Followed by the (mostly dead) GoldenBackup (no link due to no website nor release, it does have a CVS though). Then followed by the common configuration parser. Then I had my disagreements with Savannah (as some of you might remember).

Then I started looking at GNA! which I am now using for my most active project, Day planner. Now what does GNA! have to offer that Savannah doesn’t?
Well, it offers easier access to the downloads directory, I can simply rsync/scp stuff from my box to the GNA! download directory. It also has SVN which is imho MUCH better than CVS (I’ve never used Arch, so I won’t say anything about that). They also offer download/website statistics, something Savannah doesn’t. The only plus of Savannah I can find is some of their admins. I’ve spoken with a few of them and they where very nice, savannah also has an IRC channel (#savannah on freenode) which is rather nice. Though currently, I’ll take my GNA! without my Savannah if that is possible thank you very much.

CCP can be downloaded from http://ccp.nongnu.org/download.html

It’s also in Mandriva Linux (cooker) contrib.
The first package to use it is squirrelmail, which I updated today.

[0 zerodogg@drizzt ccp]$ cat example.conf
# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off

[0 zerodogg@drizzt ccp]$ cat example.conf.rpmnew
# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = private
Extensions = on
AllowUsers = yes

[0 zerodogg@drizzt ccp]$ ./ccp --oldfile example.conf --newfile example.conf.rpmnew
Merging changes between "example.conf" and "example.conf.rpmnew"...done

[0 zerodogg@drizzt ccp]$ cat example.conf
# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off
AllowUsers = yes
[0 zerodogg@drizzt ccp]$

Like i said it currently supports key = value files. Any format will do. It can for instance handle any of the following:

$Key = Value;
$Key=Value
$Key='Value'
$Key="Value"
$Key ="Value"
Key = Value
Key=Value
# Comment
: Comment
; Comment
[Section header that gets ignored]

It doesn’t support comments on the same line as a config option, but this can probably be added at some later time.
I haven’t written any documentation yet – but here’s the same usage sample I used before (edited to suit the way ccp now works).

/etc/example.conf:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off

/etc/example.conf.rpmnew:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = private
Extensions = on
AllowUsers = yes

/usr/share/example/config.ccptemplate:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = {CCP::CONFIG:SystemVersion}
Mode = {CCP::CONFIG::Mode}
Extensions = {CCP::CONFIG::Extensions}
AllowUsers = {CCP::CONFIG::AllowUsers}

Command:

$ ccp --template /usr/share/example/config.ccptemplate --oldfile /etc/example.conf --newfile /etc/example.conf.rpmnew
Merging changes between "/etc/example.conf" and "/etc/example.conf.rpmnew"...done

Resulting /etc/example.conf:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off
AllowUsers = yes

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off

/etc/example.conf.rpmnew could look like this:
# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = private
Extensions = on
AllowUsers = yes

/usr/share/example/config.ccptemplate could look something like this:
# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = $CCP::CONF:SystemVersion
Mode = $CCP::CONF::Mode
Extensions = $CCP::CONF::Extensions
AllowUsers = $CCP::CONF::AllowUsers

ccp would read these files and write the new /etc/example.conf as:
# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off
AllowUsers = yes

More advanced files could be supported by different –type’s. This is still mostly an idea that’s growing in my head but this is the basic thought of it. Quite possibly –template wouldn’t be needed and it would autogenerate a template on-the-fly by using the .rpmnew (or whichever file is the new one – ccp is not rpm specific, it is just one of multiple modes it would be able to run in).