Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 01:48:25 +0000 () From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Thoughts on the install and on Red Hat Linux. Message-ID: <199511270148.BAA02573@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <16288.817330725@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Nov 25, 95 12:18:45 pm
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Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying: > I have to say that some of the debate that just went on in ports > concerning the new install structure should probably have waited until > all the principals had done some more checking into existing > technologies. :-) There is a wealth of valuable examples to study in > RHL, both good and bad. If I had a spare machine to do it on, I would have 8) > I don't think I like their RPMS very much, but many of the ideas > behind them are good. I especially liked their X based package > browser - though the interface was seriously clunky and needed a > face-lift, it could at least be said to be working NOW. I give them > full marks for having done a lot more of the ground work than we have. I had a good look at the code inside it, and tried to bring it up under FreeBSD. Needless to say, it's _very_ dependant on their peculiar (read obscene) directory structure, and breaks dismally if anything is awry. > Nonetheless, I was favorably impressed by the sheer depth of their > coverage and I was asked enough questions to bring me all the way up > into X on the first try, the installer even giving me the chance to ID > everything from my board's clock chip to the monitor specs. Yup, this > is how to do it! Hmm. Two days ago you were saying "it can't be done!" (or for the australians here, "we'll all be rooned!"), wrt. leap to X. Has this changed your mind? (I'm being optomistic here 8) > Can we re-open the traditional (heh heh) dialog on this topic? > piece out from under the GPL. We might want to also go for a more > forms based approach to Marc's objects since having to do the object > traversal yourself in the application gets tedious - it would be better > to allow a forms shell to handle the traversal along pre-configured > paths, calling any callback functions registered to various objects > along the way. Do we want the forms shell to go so far as to do traversal, or to just run a given form? (I see traversal as being a bit tougher, and I'm not sure what we gain from it, other than yet another interpretive language 8( ) > Then we should add back all the primitive objects necessary to > re-implement menus, gauges, text boxes and whatever else we're using > from libdialog. We can have some *real* radio button menus that call > individual callbacks when you toggle the items - whoopie! :) Ah drat. I was looking to the forms interpreter as a seperate shell on the end of a pipe, reading forms and returning the result. We can still do callbacks like this, it's just a little more work. (note, with care, we can have forms interpreters that will run the same form under almost any interface, size permitting) > 2. I think we need to sit down and devise a list of tcl commands, > in their own little library and name space, for doing all the sorts > of things that one might want to do to files on the system in the > process of "installing packages." Maybe we'll find that existing > TCL or TCLX primitives require just a few more additions to make > for a completely robust package building environment, I dunno. > We'll just have to look and see. Ok, I'm sold on TCL. I know it's not perfect, but it's a _common_ language, so the available programmer-base is much larger. Can we win the war to get tcl into the base distribution? 8) This "devision" should go well with John's recent post wrt. the 16-step plan to a tighter installation. > Comments? Yay! > Jordan -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 041-122-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] "Who does BSD?" "We do Chucky, we do." [[
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