[collectd] Collectd feature proposition - Configuration plugins

[Arthur Havlicek]

Collectd conf is a hindrance in a distributed setup if you want it to be 
easily maintained by non-admins, because that means you basically have 
to program a software piece to ssh and distribute a configuration and 
restart for them to use. This was my wish, but I realised that 
restarting collectd in a distributed environment might not be a good 
idea in the long run if I have the high traffic I expect on my setup. 
Worse, breaking the conf somewhere would likely make the service being 
unable to run for some time, but I definitely don't want to code a 
configuration validator right now.

This is why, I thought about a new collectd enhancement, and a pretty 
big one - configuration plugins. Basically, the idea is to be able to 
read a collectd configuration from a database or from the network, and 
have collectd to behave fully like a minion. Everytime someone pushes a 
new configuration, collectd would soft reset and read the new 
configuration, without interrupting the service.

Because I made an assumption it is doable in reasonable time, I intend 
to develop this on my own and distribute this back to collectd 
community, but I would gladly accept returns about whether you find this 
project interesting or not and help about how to properly soft reset the 
daemon. I suppose the conf itself is going to be the easiest part since 
I just have to turn current behavior in a lib that would produce the 
same intermediate configuration objects.

Thank you in advance for help and listening.