Re: [gentoo-dev] Antwort: Re: [gentoo-dev] YaST will be GPL [Virus checked]

[Stuart Herbert]

On Saturday 20 March 2004 00:18, John Nilsson wrote:
> Could you elaborate on that?

One of Gentoo's strengths is that most packages are installed *without* any 
sort of customisation at all.  If you were to download the tarball, compile 
and install it yourself, what you'd end up with would the same or almost the 
same.

This approach also has the advantage that packaging new versions of packages 
is a very straight-forward piece of work.

Now, if you want to change every package's existing configuration file with 
any new approach, where is this change going to be made?  Some packages may 
adopt it upstream, but not every package will.  So, eventually it'll come 
down to Gentoo to add this support when they package up a new version.  I 
just don't see Gentoo being able to patch each and every tool that has its 
own configuration file.

That way seems to be quite a change in direction for what Gentoo actually is.  
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml is very clear.  Gentoo is a *meta* 
distribution (their emphasis).

It's also worth pointing out that AIX has been doing this for years.  Having a 
GUI is great, but sooner or later you need to do something that the GUI isn't 
flexible enough to do.

Another way would be to leave the packages alone, and instead have a tool that 
is programmed to write out the config files that each package wants / needs.  
Sounds like Linuxconf, doesn't it?  Need I say anything more?

> My suggestion was not to replace text-based
> configuration, just unify the formating of them...
> I also believe that this is a perfect application for XML. It is still
> text-based though.

If you're going to create a tool that generates each package's normal config 
file from an XML-driven system, I'd be willing to bet that you can't find an 
XML structure that allows you to do this for all cases.  And the closer you 
get to one, the more complicated it becomes.

It also sounds like you're pushing a technology that is looking for a 
problem ...

> Developers create a Schema that a configuration file must validate
> against.

Which developers?  Gentoo developers, or the upstream developers?

> > Now for this to be usable, a Schema (or DTD) is developed that
> their Schema must validate against. This uber Schema is formulated in a
> way such that a configuration editor, adhering to the standard, can edit
> any applications configuration in a secure and user friendly way without
> "plugins" or modification.

What value would this configuration editor actually add?  It's going to have 
to know quite a lot about the permittable combination of options, and their 
side effects, to add much more value than using an existing "configuration 
editor" such as vi, emacs, KWrite, and so on.

Sounds like you'd just end up having to duplicate each packages' existing 
configuration file validation logic into the tool via the XML.  Duplication 
can work if you're in competition - but when you've got two people or groups 
doing exactly the same thing, usually one group ends up giving up.

> In a way the Schema from the app is a generalized plugin that kind of
> "implements" the configuration superclass... (for you OOProgrammers =)
>
> -John

I'm not convinced that this effort will be successful, or that it adds 
sufficient value to be worth trying.

Just a personal opinion,
Stu
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Stuart Herbert                                              stuart@g.o
Gentoo Developer                                       http://www.gentoo.org/
Missed the php|cruise?             http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/cruise-2004/

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