Thoughts on system properties for startup

[Tom Zeller]

>>Now that you've said this a couple of times I think I am getting it
>>now : avoid the property just for the userFlowRegistry base-path and
>>document not to use backslashes. Okay.
>
> Maybe. I'm not sure we can avoid the special property because my
> workaround really was addressing the specific case of a path in idp.home,
> and hardwiring the webflow config to use file: in front of it. If we want
> to allow for non-files there, we'd have to define a property anyway. I
> just want it to be specific to that need because the webflow logic really
> is very particular and unusual.
>
> But for now, we could deal with that later and just use
> file:${idp.home}/flows in the config.

I'm using "base-path=${idp.home}/flows" without the "file:" prefix and
it works fine because I changed the web app ctx to prefer filesystem
paths, which means idp.home can be a URL. So that's what I think we
should go with, pending me understanding you better.

>>So, if someones does use backslashes in idp.home, SWF will throw a
>>FlowExecutionException with, for example, root cause
>>NoSuchFlowModelException "No flow model 'auth/conditions' found". Is
>>that okay ? Should the app ctx initializer look for backslashes in
>>idp.home and warn ?
>
> Yeah, I think it's worth warning on that. I'm even ok converting them if
> it's a universal fix. I just didn't want to define a special property for
> that and end up with it only working for some things. But I think warning,
> or even just failing outright on it, is probably enough.

Calling StringUtils.cleanPath() just like the SWF code for that one
property seems safe enough to me.