plugins.ini should be collapsed into quantum.conf to prevent configuration"sprawl"

In lp:~netstack/quantum/quantum-unit-test I have made some changes to allow configuration options to the plugins.
Maybe this mechanisms can be leveraged for fixing this bug.

Note: let's NOT tackle this prior to the diablo release, as it is too late in the game to mess with something so fundamental.

Can we target this for essex-2 please? Too late in the cycle to be changing this stuff.

Untargeting following review on patches. Considering that we are relying on plugins.ini in several places outside of quantum, I would consider leaving plugins.ini where it is, and marking this bug as invalid.

Having a single configuration file would probably be more 'elegant', but having both quantum.conf and plugins.ini will not be too much of an issue.

Man, this feature is the king of getting bumped. Let's do it E-3 for real.

My concern with the existing implementation is that if someone is unaware that there is a new way to configure the plugin, and they only change the plugins.ini, it seems like the plugin specified in the quantum.conf is still used.

We probably need to talk more about this.

The branch has been languishing on gerrit for a while now, and we are approaching Essex-3.
Since this is a change which might have unexpected effects, we said in the past we wanted to avoid merging it close to a milestone release.
Is Essex-3 still a good target, or should we postpone it to E-4 or F?

If it really just needs review, let's still push it for E-3, assuming we have the backward compatibility right. If more work is required and we are short on cycles, E-4 is ok.

I'm assuming we want the following backward compatibility behavior:

1) if someone sets the plugin using the "old" mechanism (i.e., only knows about changing plugins.ini), then this should still work.
2) if someone knows about the "new" mechanism (i.e., sets it in quantum.conf, does not modify plugins.ini), then this should work.

I think when i tested out this patch a while back, #1 above did not work. Was I doing something incorrectly?

sigh.... for real... this is going to be in E-4. For real :)

sigh....

we should just make this change for folsom, backward compat be damned.

This issue is addressed in the common-cfg blueprint (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/quantum/+spec/use-common-cfg). The plugin.ini file was merged into the quantum.conf.
I do not think that backward compatability is an issue here and the quantum installation scripts (ubuntu, fedora et al) should deal with this.

Looking at garyk comment, it seems we can finally close this bug.
Please tell me we can!

hooray!