Please suggest me the correct sentence - "as they need" or "as they will be needed"?

Question

I need help regarding this two sentences bellow. I am not sure which one is correct, or if either sound fluent. Please tell me about the correct grammatical rules.

1. We will write various configurations later as they needed.
2. We will write various configurations later as they will be needed.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

We will write various configuration files as they are needed.

Would be the most natural phrasing, assuming the context is in fact configuration files as in Linux's /etc/ folder.

Further reading.

Answer 2

I think I had made mistake by using the word "as". That misled every one who answered above. What I was looking for was, "We will write various configurations later when/(as soon as) they will be needed."

Looks like just one wrong word can change the whole meaning.

Answer 3

The first version is just wrong. Without other modifiers, "they needed" is a simple declarative in the past tense, and doesn't fit with the first clause.

The second is grammatic, but almost certainly not what you are trying to say. "We will write various configurations later as they will be needed." In this case, "as" would be interpreted as "because". This is grammatic, but seems to be stating the obvious: we will need configurations later, so we will write them later. This is pretty generic. It is also somewhat vague about exactly when the configurations will be written. It might mean tomorrow.

I think "We will write various configurations later as they are needed." is the most likely version to be used. It suggests that the configurations will be produced in direct response to needs.