> Today I addressed a topic which bugged me since long time.

Right. No easy subject. For me, too, this has been a problem in MIDAS for a long time.

> Now, on each start of the frontend program, the values from equipment[] are written to 
> the ODB. They are still "live". If one changes them when the frontend is 
> running, that change takes effect immediately. But on the next restart of the 
> frontend, the old values from equipment[] is put back there.

There is a downside from this behaviour.

If some values in equipment/common are "live" and the user is expected to change them,
the user will be unpleasantly surprised when their changes magically disappear (after reboot,
after frontend crash, after run restart if experiment requires restarting some frontends
before starting a new run).

This change will also break some experiments that rely in things like specifying
event buffer names through ODB. But experiments can adapt and specify buffer names
through command line switch instead of ODB.

This new way also it makes the "live" Common/Period unusable. Sure I can speed up or slow
down a frontend even during the run, but if my change does not "stick", what good is it?

Personally, I think there is no easy solution for all these troubles.

I would advocate the following approach:

- think of MIDAS as a "mature" system,
- treasure backward compatibility
- (if we must break backward compatibility to introduce a new "must have" improvement, so be it)
- document how things work. if it is clearly written down what different fields in "common" do, fewer people 
"get burned" by unexpected or illogical things. (and any non-trivial system has plenty of those).

Going back to ODB equipment/common, my experience with midas and odb tells me
that one should avoid mixing together ODB entries set by user and ODB entries set by code.

For example, separating them as equipment/settings and equipment/variables works well. Mixing
them as in equipment/common and sequencer/state causes trouble.

So perhaps we should split Equipment/common into two pieces, user settable fields like
"Period" and "event buffer name" would move to equipment/settings or whatever.

This will open the discussion of which items in equipment/common should be user settable,
and some people would want event buffer specified in the code to prevail, while other
people would want the name from odb to prevail, and both are valid but conflicting preferences.

Or we could bite the bullet and say, equipment/common is controlled by the frontend code,
the user should not change it. (and mark it read-only in ODB).

For all the pain this may cause, at least this will make it self-consistent.

Per this proposal, in addition to Stefan's change, the hotlink on equipment/common goes away,
"period" is no longer "live" and the whole subdirectory is made "read-only".

K.O.