[gentoo-dev] Google SoC @ Gentoo - Universal Select Tool

[Sérgio Almeida]

Gentoo Dev's,

My name is Sérgio Almeida, I am Portuguese and I am a student for this
year's Google SoC coding the Universal Select Tool project for Gentoo
being Sébastien Fabbro (bicatali) my mentor.

Abstract:

Universal Select Tool is an utility to manage system configuration.
This tool is similar to the unmaintained eselect utility of Gentoo or
Exherbo's eclectic. The idea is to create a tool that  manages both
system settings and user settings with profile creation possibilities.
The utility will use mostly concepts from "modules", "softenv", and
both "eselect" and "eclectic".

My initial proposal does not get in-depth with implementation details
and I need to make some decisions as soon as possible. Implementation
language will be python as it is easy to maintain, easy to code and
faster and more flexible than bash. See attachment for more details.

Besides introducing myself, the purpose of this e-mail is a
call-to-ideas to all Gentoo developers, mainly all eselect-* and
*-config developers.

Here are the main interest ideas:

* keep eselect structure of modules - actions

* symlinking, environment and aliases actions can consist of something
like:

        # module moo comments
        description "Example Module description"
        version "Example Module Version"
        author "moo@××××.moo"
        # action system moo
        description "Moo Action Description"
        symlink "regexp" "regexp"
        env "regexp" "regexp"
        alias "regexp" "regexp"
        # end moo
        
These should get the job done for most of the modules and opens the door
to automatic module creation prior to a successful emerge (if some USE
flag set)

* Actions that consist of code blocks that support any scripting
language (what about binaries?) to do more complex actions (full module
example):

    # module moo comments
        description "Example Module description"
        version "Example Module Version"
        author "moo@××××.moo"
        
        # action user moo
        description "Example Module will moo for any user"
        type runnable
        runner /bin/bash
        # file moo.bash
        #!/bin/bash
        do_moo() {
        	echo "This is the Example Module mooing"
        }
        do_moo()
        # end moo.bash
        # end moo

* actions can be run system-wide and per-user:
        # action user moo
        # action system moo

* automatic module loading and profile management can be managed by some
env.d python scripts that are user-aware and follow some database
        
I've been given this difficult task of unifying all of these tools
together and as you all can understand, I won't be having the time to
read through all eselect-* modules and *-config utilities code.

Please drop me a line here or at freenode if you have anything to add to
these ideas or have any further ideas that can help me on this project.
Thank you all in advance.

Cheers,
Sérgio Almeida
mephx @ freenode