Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 03:35:59 -0800 From: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> To: Alex Belits <abelits@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us> Cc: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>, khansen@njcc.com, "Ron G. Minnich" <rminnich@Sarnoff.COM>, hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: A web-based FreeBSD configuration tool. Message-ID: <199803021135.DAA10153@rah.star-gate.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 02 Mar 1998 03:15:53 PST." <Pine.LNX.3.96.980302025147.22222A-100000@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us>
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I don't have many comments --- well okay at work we got a 20000 line system install thingy all written in shell try debugging that 8) <granted thats one bad extreme> Traditional scripting languages for unix, sh, csh , tcsh are a bit antiquated and downright awkward to work with. Java is extensible and its supporting structure is intensively being worked on . For design methodologies , there are excellent books such as Design Patterns : Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software Erich Gamma Richard Helm Ralph Johnson John Vlissides If you have not read it is an excellent book . Best Regards, Amancio > On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Amancio Hasty wrote: > > > > I'd suspect the keyboard/montitor-less configuration is much more > > > important in the set of people that contribute to FreeBSD than in the > > > average case. The question is if we want to lock out the people that > > > _do_ contribute code. > > > > > Eivind. > > > > For a user friendly configuration tools we can forget about experts. > > Besides most of them are fully capable of deploying their own configuration > > tools. Well, at least I was able to for one of my contracts 8) > > I disagree. We can produce "easy configuration" tools as much as we > want, but we will have to re-do them every time, some change is done (in > distributed version, or locally by an "expert" sysadmin), if those tools > won't be extensible and suitable for complex tasks. Red Hat with its > tcl-based configuration is just below the acceptable level (it has more or > less configurable scripts and horribly inflexible interface, no networked > reconfiguration in synchronized manner, no reasonable way to add new > features, no general transactions mechanism, etc), and I think that we > should do something above it if we don't want to be studied in schools as > the point where unix/unixlike development degraded into the same amateur > level, some other kinds of programmers are known for. Sun won't do it for > us (NIS+ is the best it was capable of, even though it's the opposite > approach), neither will others (nothing worth mentioning here, not even > SGI except as an example of poor security design). > > > We should start targetting newbies -- got a complaint from my ISP > > that he was starting to see people moving away from NT and asked > > about ease of FreeBSD . For evaluation purposes he has installed > > linux and FreeBSD. > > If the system is designed well, its default configuration can be very > newbie-friendly, however others will be able to reconfigure and/or extend > it. Limiting it to newbie level won't give us much. > > > BTW: Now that the Java front is picking steam perhaps someone can > > start thinking about using Java for system or user configuration stuff. > > As long as it's limited to user-interface client. I see no excuse for > making a system that can't configure its own startup scripts without java, > or for branching of FreeBSD distribution into "newbie" and "expert" > ones, based on this (yes, I'm the same Alex Belits, who was > exaplining/defending here Linux's reasons for multiple distributions -- > but they don't apply well in this case). > > > The latest version of the jdk can be run without X . > > With all GUI? What low-level interface will it use? > > -- > Alex > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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