Ok, I implemented it the following way:

- Added a boolean flag "equipment_common_overwrite", which must be contained in EACH frontend, preferably just 
before the EQUIPMENT structure, such as:

BOOL equipment_common_overwrite = TRUE;

EQUIPMENT equipment[] = {
...
};

- If that flag is TRUE, then the contents of the "equipment" structure is copied to the ODB on each start of the 
front-end

- If the flag is FALSE, then the ODB values are kept on the start of the front-end

The setting of the flag depends now on the philosophy of the experiment. Some experiments say that everything 
needed should be in the front-end code, so when it starts everything gets set correctly. They don't change the 
values in the ODB, but in the frontend code, which then goes into their repository. Other experiments just need 
some default values from the frontend code, and the fine-tune things by changing values in the ODB. These 
experiments should set this flag to FALSE.

*****

Please note that EVERY frontend now needs this flag, so all of you have to add it to all of your front-ends, 
otherwise the front-end will not compile! I could not figure out how to this could be done without this 
requirement, since you can define a global variable only once.

*****


Stefan