Re: CDD Tool Proposal

[Free Ekanayaka <free@miu-ft.org>]

|--==> Andreas Tille writes:

  AT> On Tue, 7 Dec 2004, Sergio Talens-Oliag wrote:
  >>Initially I plan to start the development in one or two weeks, probably
  >>using Python (I plan to share code with tools already on development, like
  >>debpartial-mirror) and Shell scripts, but the idea is that the tool will
  >>have a modular design and will accept modules written in other languages.
  AT> While I personally prefere Python over Perl you should keep in mind that
  AT> we definitely should not add extra Dependencies to the resulting DEB packages.
  AT> This was the reason to use Shell scripts only for cdd-common package.  I do
  AT> not really mind about extra Build-Depends for building the cdd-tools package
  AT> but adding an extra dependency for the results would probable make some
  AT> people (not me because Python is installed at all my machines) unhappy.

I'm pro-Python too, but I understand Andreas' concern, even if I don't
understand exactly why  one would prefer to not  install Python on his
system. It's relatively big, yes, but disks are  big nowadays, and the
python package shouldn't hurt.

  AT> Comments to the Wiki:

  AT> Control File Fields

  AT>     Include
  AT>       Very good idea which more or less should handle personal preferences.

  AT>     Task-Menu
  AT>       Please make sure that it is possible to provide menu overrides for
  AT>       single packages in each single meta package as it is done in Debian-Med
  AT>       (version 0.8.9)

I'd add also something like:

Pkg-Menu: My/Custom/Path

if it's declared then the package(s) included in subsequent Depends/Recommends/Suggests
will have the standard menu path overridden by that custom path.

  AT>     Base-Config and Base-Config-Menu
  AT>       I do not really know this stuff but I guess this is needed for installation,
  AT>       right?

Yes, but I don't understand why one would put files in /usr/lib/base-config..

Isn't /usr/lib/base-config/menu enough for all base-config related things?

AFAIR Skole does use /usr/lib/base-config and  maybe others too, but I
don't see why.

Other comments:

  Debconf-Preseed
    as for the menu I'd like to be able to specify this information on per-package
    basis, e.g.

    Pkg-Debconf-Preseed

    This way I'd have all the information relevant for a certain package in a
    single place:

    Pkg-Relevance:              4
    Pkg-Debconf-Preseed:        key1=value1, key2=value2
    Pkg-Menu:                   My/Custom/Path
    Depends:                    somepkg

    So we may split Dedbconf-Preseed in Pkg-Debconf-Preseed (with the above semantics)
    and Task-Debconf-Preseed with the same semantics as the current Debconf-Preseed

  AT> The CDD Tool

  AT>     As mentioned above if you plan to use cdd-tool for both, building the
  AT>     meta packages *and* management of CDDs on the CDD-System an extra
  AT>     dependency from Python would not really be in the interest of people
  AT>     who want to build a "minimalistic" CDD.  Please check whether the
  AT>     extra comfort of Python is worth making some people angry.

  AT> In general I *really* like your plan and would be proud to be your first
  AT> alpha tester.

Me too, you have one more tester and optionally coder/reviewer.

All in all it's a good document.. well done Sergio!

Cheers,

Free