Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Jon Nelson <jnelson@×××××××.net>
To: Tom Philbrick <tom@××××××××××.com>
Cc: gentoo-dev@g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 10:14:42
Message-Id: 20020724101457.13c4988c.jnelson@jamponi.net
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus? by Tom Philbrick
1 All I can say is:
2
3 You the Man.
4
5 It's been on my List of things TO DO.
6 [I have a very long, getting longer-every-day, list].
7
8 Make available what you've got to us, or send it to me,
9 and I'll make it available, etc...
10
11 Thanks, and let's take a look!
12
13 On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 11:08:06 -0400
14 Tom Philbrick <tom@××××××××××.com> wrote:
15
16 > Searching the mailing list archives, I see that back in April
17 > someone asked about automatic menus. One reply said that it was
18 > already being worked on, while others said the opposite. Is
19 > anyone currently working on an automatic menu system for
20 > gentoo, and if so, what is its status?
21 >
22 > I ask because I am in the process of porting the debian menu
23 > system over to gentoo, but I realized I should stop and see if
24 > it is worth the effort. I have the program working as far as I
25 > can tell, although I haven't done much testing yet. It still
26 > needs a lot of work, but most of that is tailoring it to gentoo
27 > rather than debian (rewriting documentation, and making my
28 > hacks less of a hack). The build isn't pretty, I see now why
29 > debian is not a source distro, but it works for now and I'm
30 > working on cleaning it up.
31 >
32 > For those of you that have never used debian (or mandrake, as
33 > menudrake uses the debian menu system under the hood) you can
34 > read a good overview of it at:
35 > http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/index.html
36 >
37 > For the system to work, it would require that every package
38 > that wants to use a menu must install a menu-method that
39 > describes how to generate a menu for that program (these can me
40 > borrowed from debian, or written from scratch). It also would
41 > require that every application that wanted to be in a menu
42 > include a simple menu file that describes what the menu entry
43 > should be. Yes that means a lot of packages would need to be
44 > updated, but the menufiles take about 30 seconds to write, and
45 > are simple enough for anyone to do.
46 >
47 > So what should I do? Post a new package bug now? Wait until it
48 > is completely done? Wait until a better time? Give up in favor
49 > of a more mature, or better, solution?
50
51
52 --
53 Jon Nelson
54 Just because it's not broken doesn't mean we can't take it apart.