[gentoo-soc] ventoo - progress report

[Christopher Harvey]

This week I worked on remote editing of remote computers. One of the 
major goals for ventoo is to be able to edit multiple computers at the 
same time. Since Ventoo can parse config files into syntax trees it is 
possible to traverse many of these trees in parallel then display paths 
in the trees that are the same, and paths that differ, then let the user 
change all of the at the same time.
I wanted to get remote editing working with one other computer, and I 
was going to use scp to transfer the files back and forth, but it turns 
out using scp with python is difficult, and any other method would 
require a few more weeks to integrate properly. One way or another, 
Ventoo is going to have to be able to access these remote files as if 
they were local files. To work in this direction I added a feature to 
ventoo that lets the user pick a root directory to work with and switch 
it as many times as he/she likes. The ASTs are reparsed every switch and 
the ui is updated. In the future, when editing multiple computers, the 
user would have to pick several of these roots, and a future developer 
would have to display the ASTs intelligently for editing. This week I 
laid the foundation for that to happen. As of now, the user can switch 
roots on the local machine, and if a remote root is mounted locally, 
edit the remote machine as well.