Re: [gentoo-dev] User question during ebuild

[Thilo Bangert]

Hi,
On Thursday, 14. March 2002 16:33, you wrote:
> I've been playing around with Gentoo on and off since rc3 and I
> have a need for it now.  I'm building a appliance style database
> server for a client and I want to use ebuilds to install and
> maintain my custom application as well as some patched utilities.
> During the install I'd like to ask the user some questions and
> take action based on the answer.
>

this is a dificult part - i feel. usually ebuilds are just ebuilds - 
ie. the install software, they don't configure something. 

this is however in a few cases done anyway (the qmail ebuild comes to 
my mind - which pretty much sets up the whole thing) - but even though 
the ebuild does configuration, it does not ask the user any questions. 
IMHO ebuilds should not ask questions but run non-interactivly.

when gontran and me rebuild the djbdns ebuild, we choose to write some 
setup scripts which then ask the user all the questions needed to get 
one going.

(BTW. the new djbdns ebuild is not in portage yet - checkout 
http://fizzelpark.com/portage/ )

this is very much MHO!

> Is there a framework for this type of activity?

well, there is bash :-)

>
> Thanks,
> -Aaron Held

-- 
regards
Thilo