Add the reading of the old INI file in Stepconf

Hi,
I thought about what cmorley said about reading the INI file .
As everyone knows, Stepconf rewrites the file INI and destroys the changes made by hand.
I think we can use the ConfigParser library (python2.7) or configparser (python3) to read the INI file. The same can also be used to write the file in build_INI.py.
We can read the INI file and save the known parameters in the Data class.
Then using the same library in the INI file we write the parameters of the Data class and leave the other parameters read unchanged. Obviously the build_INI.py file must be completely rewritten.
What do you think?

Nicola.

Sounds good - can't hurt to try a proof of concept..

if you come from 2.2 -2.4
you shoudt not update
as so many has changed
it is realy a better way to print out the Connections to Parport and go for the newer design GUI also

the 2.7 and the new Master did push the Software to a new level
and from 2.6 the config will be updated by the updater on Axis start

I don't think there were all that many changes made that would affect a parallel port config when updating from 2.4 to 2.7. I would strongly recommend a using a fresh installation of Linuxcnc (lots of changes including renaming the project.) rather than trying to upgrade an existing installation. But the only changes to your config files I can think of would be removing this line from your hal file "loadrt probe_parport". So copying your configuration files from the old systems ~/emc2/configs/ directory to the new systems ~/Linuxcnc/configs/ should be worth the effort.

I can not say what may happen if you tried to open a Stepconfig configuration made with an old pre-2.4 version of EMC2 with the current version of Stepconfig. It is possible it may work or it could fail miserably.

I think I explained myself wrong, sorry.
By "old ini file", I mean the file previously edited by hand.
I wasn't referring to older versions of Stepconf...

Nicola.