[Bug 55654] Extract variables from configuration without starting server

[bu...@apache.org]

https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55654

--- Comment #1 from Arno Töll <ar...@debian.org> ---
For context, to fully understand the problem:

Debian/Ubuntu packages set - for example - the httpd user in its httpd.conf to
${APACHE_RUN_USER}, a non-terminal value which is interpreted and evaluated at
runtime by apachectl with information sourced from /etc/apache2/envvars. 

The downside of that is, that you cannot start apache simply by executing
"httpd start" (or "apache2 start" effectively on Debianish systems), but you
have to use apachectl and you have an additional layer of indirection.

The background is, that we need reliably to know what the user is set to, so
that, for example, we can create volatile directories at boot/start time BEFORE
apache starts. Now, you know yourself how many funny ways are define a
configuration key in Apache to the server context. For example, think of keys
learned through inclusion of third files etc. 

It's just not reliable to simply parse the main httpd.conf file without having
access to the full httpd configuration file parser engine. That's why we did it
the way we did by adding that layer of indirection.

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