Re: Autoloading of compctl from dbm database file.

[Zefram <zefram@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>]

Some general comments.

First, those compctls not currently in the distribution are worth
adding.  The example alias file, however, is a very bad idea, and
should not be included.

We already have a function autoloading facility.  Aliases are cheap to
store, usually short, and people don't have so many of them.  I think
it is therefore not worth adding the database autoloading for them.
However, a dbm database may be a good solution to the problem of
autoloading compctls.

The idea of creating a single global database is flawed.  These
databases *must* be individual.  (However, the capability to use
several database files at once, in a path structure, to allow sharing
of compctls would be good.  Automatic installation of a standard
database of compctls would then be justifiable.) All we really need is
the extra builtin to allow saving and autoloading of compctls, and it
is then easy enough to edit the database by hand from a normal shell.

You limit the code to gdbm, because it does locking.  I suggest that if
we use code like this, that we handle standard dbm as well, either
doing locking ourselves (with more autoconfed code) or ignoring the
issue (after all, the databases won't be changing *that* often).

-zefram