Import/Export Configuration #2656
Description
Feature Description
JPlag has many great features, many of which are not very well-known and used by few people. One point that may prevent users from using those advanced features is that they have to remember to activate and configure them in the command-line arguments. As a small step towards encouraging the (well-informed) use of these advanced features, it would be helpful to store the configuration of a run of JPlag in a file and reuse it for the next runs.
Discussion points:
- Should the configuration be exported only when a flag is present (--export-config), or should it be the default behavior?
- Should a configuration be logically linked to the submission directory or stored in the location of the JPlag executable?
- Should a configuration file be used only when a flag is present (--load-config), or should there be a default location for configuration files used by default?
- Should report files be involved in this, which also contain a representation of the configuration (currently mainly for users to read, not to reuse)?
Use Case
For example, I might want to use
- structural normalization for Java (
--normalize), - a non-default minimum match length (
-t 13), or - a specific configuration of excluded files
for each run of JPlag I do for my context. Currently, I can save the CLI arguments in a text file, but I would have to tediously adapt them for each individual run. As an alternative, I want to be able to save the configuration and reuse it—how exactly is still to be discussed.