[Nut-upsdev] Proposal: Add an "initialize.*" prefix to `ups.conf` device settings

[Jim Klimov]

Hello all,

  Recently there were a few issue discussions the crux of which was that
when
some UPS values are overridden e.g. by `override.battery.charge.low=40` then
the driver knows this value (and in case of "override.*" vs "default.*" has
it "bolted"
even if the device reports something else), but there is no value-setting
actually
propagated to a device (so a capable UPS HW/FW would raise the LB alarm
at that charge level). Setting the value explicitly with `upsrw` as part of
driver
service unit startup (for devices which support setting that, but do not
remember
it across power-cycles) helped in the discussed cases.

  My proposal is to introduce another prefix for such values where the
driver
would actively push them to the device during daemon start-up. So far I came
up with a couple of ideas, e.g.:
* `initialize.battery.charge.low` - push the setting to device (if
possible) and then
  act as `default.battery.charge.low` so if the device HW/FW does not
actually
  support that toggle, the driver knows the value from config; and if it
does - the
  driver knows it from an actual reading.
* `initialize.(default|override).battery.charge.low` - like above, but
explicitly say
  how the value is treated next (e.g. `override` like before makes sense
for broken
  firmware). One downside is that such spelling is longer and more
cumbersome,
  but on the upside - explicit and less open to surprises.

So far this was just an idea in the back of my head, no code written - so a
good
moment to discuss: whether there is merit to this? Is `initialize` a proper
keyword
for the idea? Which of the two ideas above, or some alternate one, is
better?
What is the best bike-shed color? Would anyone step up to code this? (Should
be a dozen lines I think, plus docs).

Jim Klimov
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