On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Mikkel Christiansen wrote:

uploading. We believe this is a good thing since it allows
admins to (syntax) check the filter before inserting it.
I believe the guys from shorewall sees this as a missing
feature of iptables.

See iptables-restore. It is exacly this (compile whole ruleset before
insert) for iptables. The only thing missing is that it only compiles one
table at a time.

Regards
Henrik