[Proposal] Use "config/" instead of "etc/"

[javiereguiluz]

This is a controversial topic that is often discussed in the Symfony Slack chat. More and more people are saying that etc/ is not the best choice because it's not that easy to understand.

At first I ignored them, but this idea is growing more and more in me. Names are great when you can understand them without explanation: "etc/" requires explanation and it complicates the first experience with the framework; whereas "config/" requires no explanation and it's exactly what everybody expects.

Other popular projects use "config/" (Laravel, Rails) and it's pretty common in PHP world too (according to these stats: http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6564)

[fabpot]

Why not, I'm not opposed to the idea... and I will probably not fight much long on this one :)

[chalasr]

Not strongly against going back to config/ but I personally prefer etc/.
In addition to feeling unix (like var/) it covers stuff that I wouldn't put in config/, like encryption keys which are not about storage (do not fit in var/) and are read-only (they're piece of my setup, consumed by my configuration but are not settings themselves).

[Pierstoval]

Same as @chalasr, encryption keys or other things than config totally fit in etc/, whereas if you have config/, you would ask for a place to store such encryption keys and may end up with a new directory, specific to this...

[javiereguiluz]

Why don't you think that encryption keys fit into config/? Those keys configure the encryption used by the application. They are configuration to me (like any other credential or API token).

[Pierstoval]

It's the problem with config: not everyone have the same opinion about what to put inside.

With etc, it's unix-like, so as long as it doesn't fit anywhere else, it fits there :)

[recchia]

i prefer /etc but i'm ok with config i agreed with @chalasr

[imikay]

Please stop reassembly Linux terms in Symfony project, that's already too many etcs in Linux(/etc, /usr/local/etc), just use something straightforward and easy to understand by anyone, and config is a very commonly used name, we should just use it.

[linaori]

I don't have a hard argument that would favor either side to be honest. I know that /etc is really confusing for a lot of people and it took me time to find out what it actually meant. /config seems intuitive. However, using Linux, /etc kinda grew on me, but this is based on experience rather than being intuitive.

I agree with @chalasr, but isn't there another way you can do that? /config/keys for example. If the naming is intuitive or familiar, it beats being just familiar. My company is currently using /app/config/keys at the moment, which meets my expectations when I search for it or peek into the directory.

Personally, I feel that /config is what the community is used to because of /app/config. As it feels the most intuitive, that would have my vote, but either is fine for me.

[thunderer]

@fabpot published a poll on Twitter and /etc is losing strongly at the moment (29 : 71). I support /etc because it is a known convention, it is also consistent with /var, /bin and other such directories. I don't really understand what is to explain here - if anyone had any experience with Linux throughout their career (most of the industry definitely does), they will understand it immediately. If not, then a simple manual page like this should be more than enough. As for the "keys" example - personally, I put them in the separate directory like /keys or /etc/keys.

[linaori]

@thunderer don't forget that you can still customize what this directory is called

[chalasr]

Well, looking at a Symfony project for the first time it might not be obvious what should go into etc/. Let's keep it simple to adopt for newcomers and people that are not familiar with unix, config/ is the easy one (what I feel correct to put into is very subjective, not a blocker).

[soullivaneuh]

Both looks corrects to me. I would prefer config because this is the more used directory name on most web project, not only Symfony.

Maybe make this configurable? => Already answered by @iltar 😉

Personally, with a project based on Symfony but having Capistrano configuration and maybe others tools, I would like to configure all of them to have an unique config folder on my repository.

[greg0ire]

I'm torn between consistency with var, which would strongly suggest /etc, and the fact that /etc is not a great name... it's a bit like the Manager, Utils and Toolbox suffixes for a class (put things there if you don't want to think too hard about their location)

[javiereguiluz]

A small comment for people saying that "config/" is only for config and "etc/" is for anything. We already have a dir for "anything" and it's called "Resources/".

[COil]

I use /configuration/etc when I use exactly the same structure of /etc if not I use subfolders in configuration. So config is best as it is more generic I guess.