[gentoo-soc] ventoo weekly report

[Christopher Harvey]

This week I added a system to ventoo that highlights parts of a file 
when ventoo thinks they are invalid and should not be saved back into 
the file. The code that does the checking are external python scripts 
that users can easily add to ventoo without changing any other code. The 
reason this was added is that up until now as the user is editing a file 
he/she had no idea if the file was valid until a diff or a save was 
requested. Now SOME (or even most) errors can be caught with a python 
script that validates user input in the background. Even nicer is that 
well written scripts can catch errors that augeas can't. (augeas is the 
library I use to move the files in and out of memory and manipulate the 
file structure) For example, if the user enters /dev/sdf12, but that 
device doesn't exist, the cell lights up bright red. The user can still 
save, so it's really only a warning. Warnings like this can typically be 
checked in about 2-4 lines of python. Augeas already did a pretty good 
job of catching a lot of invalid config files, but this system makes it 
easier for the user and can catch errors that augeas wasn't designed to 
catch.

Next week:
Remote editing of other computers.