Re: YaST2 for Debian (aka nYaST)
Am Donnerstag, 18. November 2004 15.35 schrieb Rumen Krasstev:
> Hello Mario,
Morning Rumen
Sorry for the delay too.
> I'm doing big efforts last 6 months (since SuSe v 9.1 - I had
> information for future gpl-ing of yast) to do this - port Yast2 for
> Debian. I'm playing with the code these last months and I can give you
> some advices - it's appear to be not so trivial task :-/
Very interesting and realistiv. But nonetheless do you think too that it's
possible to port it, am I right?
Another question: Is there already source code which we can see?
> 1. Yast2 don't even wish to compile under Debian - there are to many
> dependencies, some of them not available to Debian, such as rpm 4.1.1
> (in unstable it's 4.0.4) - rpm is a complex program and don't want to
> compile too.. Dependencies between packages are so bad, that one can
> compile/port only packages with documentations and some basic stuff.
> I've some progress in this but I can't still compile the hole yast :(((
Ok. Is your code publicly accessible?
> 2. Even with successfully compilation it's impossible to use this
> version of Yast in Debian - there are too many differences between SuSe
> and Debian in architectural level. For example almost all configurations
> in YaST2 are made in directory sysconfig which is not LSB1/2 compatible,
> furthermore there are too many config files with custom names, like
> timezone, firewall, etc. So in general using this version of Yast will
> make your system unpredictable :(
Ok. So we have to make huge modifications.
> 3. Fortunatly the guys in SuSe made Yast (technologically) very mature -
> it's totally modular and have 3 different independent levels (layers) -
> representative (QT, curses and the new one GTK+), module (ex: firewall,
> proxy, dns server, samba, etc.) and configuration files.. This is a long
> story but i could tell you in general how it works - the modules are
> written in abstract custom (4th level) language - something between C
> and Prolog (for example) - there is a parser which translate this
> language to C.. For example you want a window and type
> window.open(parameters) and it translate it to GTK or curses or QT API
> in C.. Every checkbox, listbox, button and so on is described like
> this.. All places that needs name of file/directory is replaced by
> abstract global variable, which is described in separated file (.scp) -
> so it should be enough to edit these .scp to be compliant with Debian
> for every module and probably after many tests/debugs it will work..
> ...
Very interesting.
> There is other problems, but I described only majors - the compilation
> and the transformation of the .scp
> So.. If somebody wants to helps me I can write him deep explanation how
> it works (it is very complex and big system believe me)..
I think we are interesting and it would be a pleasure for us if you could help
us. So we are really interested in a deeper explanation.
> In this meaning I thing for this project a team of 3-4 people and 6-9
> months probably will be enough...
Ok. We are 3-4 persons and with a goal in sight YaST2 will become reality.
> Regards
> Rumen
thx
Mario
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