Externalizing <ApplicationOverride>s

[Cantor, Scott]

Before I do this work, a few people have occasionally asked for some form of SP config modularization, but I want to be sure this is worth the time.

It's impossible in a schema-defined XML file to just arbitrarily start pulling bits out into separate files, so that's not doable. Externalizing the <ApplicationDefaults> or specific <ApplicationOverride> elements is possible, as is pointing it at maybe a directory to load overrides from.

So sure, I could do it. But I don't think that does what people are really after, which is for somebody to be able to inject an override from outside the system's core files, with no prior reference to it, and without granting any other write access to the system files.

I don't see that being possible, so I'm not sure this really devolves anything very cleanly. If the goal was just to define the override ahead of time, add a pointer to it into the global file, but then grant specific write access to somebody to provide that exact override's content, I guess that's doable. But that seems fairly limited in value/scope.

Anyway, I'd appreciate knowing what exactly would have to be possible to make this worth doing. It's not time well spent if it doesn't allow people to do the things they'd want to do.

-- Scott