[syslog-ng] RFC: Removing the 'dummy' module

[Gergely Nagy]

Hi!

syslog-ng comes with a 'dummy' module, that does nothing, but emit a
notice whenever it receives a message. I doubt anyone uses it, because
it is useless, and serves as an aid for module writers only, as a
skeleton to build on.

However, it is built AND installed by default, which is kinda awkward,
in my opinion, and perhaps a bit confusing too: when I see a dummy
module automatically installed, I start to wonder just what the heck it
is good for and why it is there in the first place?

Since it's completely useless, I'd like to propose either of the
following:

1) Remove the module completely from the source code.

   The rationale behind this is that it's a very basic example, shows
   very little about how a destination driver should work, and is even a
   little bit stale here and there.

   For example, the grammar directly pokes the driver structure, which
   is a bad habit (accessors are a whole lot better!).

   Furthermore, when I wanted to write a driver, I looked at the dummy
   driver first, but after a couple of minutes, I concluded it has so
   very little information, that it's not enough for me as a starting
   point. So I started to look at other drivers, and learned from there.

   In that sense, it doesn't even succeed at being a reasonable
   skeleton, or starting point.

   A HOWTO document, or something similar about the architecture of the
   various drivers would be much much more useful, but this document is
   yet to be written.

2) Keep the module, but don't install it, ever.

   As a compromise, the module could be kept, but not installed. This
   way we still have a very small example, but it's not installed
   needlessly.

I think it's obvious I'd rather go with the first option, but perhaps
there's good reasons for keeping it, that I overlooked. The decision is
in Bazsi's hand, anyway.

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