Config overrides on the command line

[Stebalien]

We have too many daemon commandline flags and the ones we have often duplicate config options. Instead of having both, we should add a flag for temporarily setting config options:

ipfs daemon --with Gateway.Offline true \
            --with Addresses.Gateway /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/8080

This is significantly more verbose than the current system but is hierarchical and easier to maintain.

[ghost]

👍

Another option is to do this with env variables, similar to what Hashicorp tools do, e.g. IPFS_CFG_Addresses_Gateway=/ip6/::1/tcp/8080 ipfs daemon. But then with that flag we can probably reuse a lot of code from the ipfs config command.

[Stebalien]

I'm always a bit scared of environment variables as they tend to be invisible.

[ghost]

Yeah they're certainly less accessible

[whyrusleeping]

👍 To this idea, we have been needing something like this for quite some time.