So ... for an Apache configuration ... with lots of Name-based Virtual Hosts ... it's generally quite convenient to have that complex configuration split into many files, with lots of use of Include and IncludeOptional. That also allows what would otherwise be many repeated common sections, to simply be brought in via Include or IncludeOptional, so they can simply be updated in some common place(s), rather than all the redundant sections scattered throughout some huge monolithic configuration file.

But *sometimes* order does or may matter - and that can be a bit trickier to then see/determine exactly what comes first, and also exactly what optional bits are and aren't included. Sometimes it's nice to "pretend", or have the perspective *as if* it were one big monolithic configuration file - even though one really does *not* want to actually have or manage it like that.

Well, for the quick-and-dirty, what would it look like if ... if we "unrolled" all those Include and IncludeOptional configuration bits, as if it then looked like one (huge) configuration file?

Well, enter the script du jour (at the moment, using it for some troubleshooting - where order does matter):

$ expand -t 4 < .unroll #!/bin/sh

set -e while read -r line do set -- $line case "$1" in Include) shift cat "$@" | "$0" ;; IncludeOptional) shift 2>>/dev/null cat "$@" | "$0" || : ;; *) echo "$line" ;; esac done $

Could probably be done better / more efficiently, in Perl, or Python ... but for the quick and dirty, that does it quite efficiently and quickly enough.

We have, on the host being examined: $ pwd -P /etc/apache2 $ wc -l apache2.conf 221 apache2.conf $ ./.unroll < apache2.conf | wc -l 6068 $ find * -type d -name RCS -prune -o -type f -exec \

egrep -h '^[ ]*Include(|Optional)[ ]' {} ; | wc -l

163 $