Re: Setup API, The next step (Re: Corel Setup Design Proposal)
>>>>> "Dave" == Dave Neil <davidne@corel.ca> writes:
Dave> Hi Everyone, There does not seem to be any objections to the
Dave> initial proposal of doing a setup API and perhaps rethinking
Dave> how we do an install. Would it be possible to come to a
Dave> consensus on this and decide if it's worth pursuing as a
Dave> joint project together?
It's obviously worth pursuing. The Linux distribution developer
community needs this.
Dave> Here's an idea for a time table. 1.For Potato i386 we work
Dave> together support an X install and the new setup API
Dave> system. Perhaps a joint GTK based install GUI if it would
Dave> help move this forward.
The setup API ought to be specified with something that can be used
to generate stubs for both GTK and KDE. There ought to be an
underlevel that's in a library of its own, with calls designed for a
user interface to utilize as a backend. Maybe that backend code
could run in separate threads, so the UI can stay fresh and display
status information? (I'll try and keep that sort of thing in the
back of my mind while I read. I've begun to read about C++ and OOP.)
(KDE/QT and Gnome/GTK+ ought to get their heads together and specify
a standard way of propagating style or theme information and whatnot.
Do I stand alone on this one? Am I way off base?)
I've only a vague notion of this sort of system at this point... as
I've been saying lately, ask me again in two years. I'll shut up
now. :-|
Dave> 3.We help with the dselect replacement, perhaps starting
Dave> with work based around gnome-apt.
I liked the idea of a common `thing' that could be driven by a UI
running with either X (pick your GUI toolkit of choice), curses,
CGI/WWW or perhaps even an automated thing, like Red Hat's
`kickstart'.
What ever happened to `deity'? I thought it was pretty neat. Like
the emacsen and xwpe, it ran on both X and a console or xterm. Not
too shabby, IMO. I guess if it used GGI, it would do framebuffers,
tty, and X all from one program, isn't that right?
What's the KDE `kpackage' like? How does it compare to `gnome-apt'
and `dselect'? I've never gotten it to build. (It bombs in the rpm
support stuff.)
Something I've noticed about `gnome-apt' and `apt' is that they don't
seem to support removing and purging a package as separate things. I
think it's important for the package tools to have both of those
options available.
If `dselect' had the filtering things that `gnome-apt' had, it would
be very much improved! I still like it better than `gnome-apt' for
many reasons, in particular, for keyboard control of the interface.
Dave> We here at Corel can and will put a lot of our resources
Dave> into developing this. My hope is that we can work together
Dave> to help Debian also benefit from this. By keeping it
Dave> flexible in its design we should be able to make it fit into
Dave> each our own visions of how it behaves and looks. This is
Dave> now up to you the Debian developers to decide if it's ago.
I'll help by continuing my studies. It's great that Corel is getting
involved with the Debian project! I'd like to see others here as
well, including Red Hat software. Corporate industry support is
something we need, both for mentorship and potential future paying
jobs.
What ever happened to `Yggdrasil Plug-n-Play Linux'? They have the
best name for a Linux distribution out of all of them, IMO. It's
occured to me that perhaps "Yggdrasil" would be a better name for
Debian than "Debian" is.
Karl M. Hegbloom, Student, Portland State University, OR, USA
Time to read.
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