Redmine

Mark P wrote:

Both the production and development lines are enabled, leading me to believe that the file wants to override default values, but where are those default values coming from, and what are they?

Up in the file, right after:

# default configuration options for all environments
default:

If I comment both prod and dev out, then are the configuration.yml file settings being used or not?

Yes.
The global idea is that to put in default: section parameters that are common to all of your environments and put your environment-specific exceptions after development: and production: lines.

I wonder then why the rake task caused a syntax error that could only be fixed by commenting those lines out.

The rake task should not raise an error even if these lines are present. This error means that your configuration.yml is not a valid YAML file. The one provided with Redmine (configuration.yml.example) is a valid one. Did you make any change to this file (like inserting tabs)?

Btw, I agree that YAML is not the best suited format for a configuration file. Maybe we should switch or support an alternative format easier to use.

As far as I know, I never modified that example, simply copied and renamed it to configuration.yml. Regardless, I removed the suspect configuration.yml file, and copied and renamed the example one again. Ran the rake tasks again successfully. The new one based on the example, as you know, has the prod and dev lines enabled. No syntax error.

Also, when I got the syntax error the first time, it did not tell me what file contained the error. I knew it was line 150 in some file, but not the file name. Knowing that would have also helped me troubleshoot.

Regarding the YAML format and the file itself, I did not understand the comments correctly as I assumed the specific config options overriding default ones applied only to the email config due to where that comment resides in the file (toward the top with the other mail config). That was my mis-reading of it. I know very little about YAML file limitations or pros/cons. Given that, I agree that dumbing it down a little more for us kindergartners would be great.

Thank you for your prompt assistance in helping me resolve this.