Quick suggestion about enable/disable protocol

[Maria Matejka]

Hello!

> Is this list the place to discuss feature requests? Please let me know 
> if there's somewhere more appropriate.

Yes.

> Re enable/disable <prot> available in CLI, but not config:
> 
> 1. Allow enable/disable to be part of the config, so that a protocol can 
> be disabled by default, and needs a manual poke via CLI command to 
> enable it. For example, a backup session that will only be enabled when 
> the main link is down.

This is already in config, use "enabled" and "disabled" keywords.

> 
> 2a. When reloading config, preserve the current state of a protocol that 
> has been disabled. (I'm trying to debug a config, which involves 
> disabling a particular BGP session, but every time I reload config BIRD 
> re-enables the session.)
> 
> 2b. An explicit "enable" directive in config (see #1) could also be used 
> to make it clear that a reload *should* enable this protocol regardless 
> of its previous state.

We don't like to change what BIRD does by default as it may confuse 
others who aren't familiar with the changes and both variants of 
behavior have their appropriate use. Yet we may consider something like 
  a "keep protocol states" option to explicitly disable protocol 
disabling/enabling on config reload.

For now, you can set "enabled/disabled" in every protocol block and 
change that together with manual protocol enabling and disabling.

We have also some rough ideas of configuration dumping which could also 
help with this, yet this kind of features still have quite a long path 
ahead.

I hope this is helpful for you.

Maria