commit bbfa1525a2bef9724f507ba36d8cb1556d79fc05
parent 2838b556f4a09610d496c6ff61be3954114e3f53
Author: Daniel Barlow <dan@telent.net>
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2026 19:23:37 +0100
think
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 32 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/THOUGHTS.txt b/THOUGHTS.txt
@@ -9133,3 +9133,35 @@ just not reliably. I tihnk it may be only if a little while has elapsed since th
# sleep 60 ; kill -USR1 390 # this seems to do it.
# sleep 30 ; kill -USR1 390 # this didn't
+
+Mon Sep 7 12:31:47 BST 2026
+
+literal_or_output is defined differently in hostapd vs ppp
+
+what it does: for use with output-template, when its param is a string
+or a number then it just prints the param, but when passed a lambda
+it assumes that lambda was made by outputRef and it transforms it into
+"{{ output(${toJSON (o "service")}, ${toJSON (o "path")})") }}"
+which output-template will expand. This feels almost as precarious an
+evaluation model as TeX
+
+- potentially we could remove the conditional if we said e.g. that
+ the `output` function returns its constant second arg if passed
+ nil as the first arg. this isn't making a huge difference though
+
+- we could have a function that encapsulated literal_or_output and the
+ invocation of output-template, then we would DRY up {{{ }}}.
+ however .. its input would be the template and we would still
+ need to figure out how to represent that
+ ["# some text\n"
+ "username = " (outputRef secrets "name") "\n"
+ ...
+ ]
+
+- we could define __toString on the outputRef attrset. arguably this
+ is a bit cheeky because we would be defining it globally, but if the
+ expansion is "{{{ blah }}}" then it only is appropriate in a
+ quite limited context
+
+why did we decide to make outputRef a function anyway and not a
+attrset?
