.. highlight:: ini

==========
 Overview
==========

For more general background on Rattail config, see
:doc:`/base/config/index`.

While it is possible to store config in a DB (see
:doc:`/base/config/db`), we will not address that here.  All config is
presumed to exist in files, at least from the perspective of the
Rattail File Monitor service.  As a rule we avoid DB interactions in
the filemon to keep its operation as simple as possible.  (Everything
"interesting" happens on the Linux server.)

The filemon service uses the Windows API to obtain the "default"
location of the config file.  It is not possible to directly tell the
service which config file to use, it always will read the default
path, which is: ``C:\ProgramData\rattail\rattail.conf``

However we still want it to read ``filemon.conf`` instead of
``rattail.conf`` - and that is possible by way of a special config
entry within ``rattail.conf``::

   [rattail.config]
   winsvc.RattailFileMonitor = C:\ProgramData\rattail\filemon.conf

So really when the service starts it first reads ``rattail.conf``, but
sees that special entry and then reads ``filemon.conf`` *instead*.
End result is as if it just read ``filemon.conf`` to begin with.  (See
:doc:`/base/config/inheritance` for more on how some of that works.)