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dcfgtool and clones



Hello everybody,

On Sat, May 24 1997 11:40 +0200 Andreas Jellinghaus writes:
> there are three tools : cfgtool (lars wirzenius), nod (winfried
> truemper), dcfgtool (mine). and someone is working on a _real_ tool (all
> three have flaws, and if this way we will get a tool with all good
> features).

With somebody, you meant eventually me, since I asked at the Linux-Kongress
in Wuerzbuerg whether I may upload a dcfgtool clone.
But whether it's a ``real'' tool, is not so sure... . Don't hold your breath.
 
> as you can see, it's a small text database. so it has nothing, absolutly
> nothing to do with deity - that's a GUI.
agreed.
 
> then we should :
> a) choose _one_ cfgtool (the current one have big flaws. the new one
> 	will not have them).
> b) change policy to _not_ allow config information in /etc scripts
> c) change policy to _not_ allow additional debian uniq config files to
> 	fix b). only the textdb should be used.
> d) think about getting rid of some config files only used by shell
> scripts, and use the textdb instead.
yes.

Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi> said:
> Assuming the syntax is simple, and there's no need for complexity, a 
> hand-written parser can be lightning fast, and all the time is spent 
> in starting the program, and reading the file. 
Mine is currently a lex parser and a yacc scanner.

Tom Lees <tom@lpsg.demon.co.uk> said:
> I know all this. But when will it be finished? What about beta 
> versions? Is there a mailing list (other than debian-admintool)? 

Finished in about a week (beta version).
Mailing list other than debian-admintool: no

Tom Lees <tom@lpsg.demon.co.uk> said:
> It would be really cool if we upgraded the packaging system to handle 
> configuration integrally (so we can do configuration _BEFORE_ an 
> installation, etc.).
Yes. But the tricky part is how to rewrite all the /etc/hosts, /etc/networks,
/etc/uucp/{sys,dial,port,config}, /etc/fstab, /etc/slip.dip etc. files.
I don't have an idea.

> Deity definitely _IS_ the right place for this - 
> a GUI to do the configuration with, at the same time as packaging 
> control! 
I'd prefer a back-end and deity would be the frontend.

Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca> said:
> To allow a GUI to present a usefull view of the config file 
> information about each field would have to be known. A short 
> description, it's content type, possible range information, etc.

You can store a comment (a la dcfgtool), but the other things are not here.
dtxtdb knows about booleans, ints, floats and strings. That's it.

Andreas Jellinghaus <aj@dungeon.inka.de> said:
> but : don't discuss it now. someone is working on a realy good textdb/
> cfgtool/however-you-call-it, and i'm sure that he will do the right 
> thing. wait till it is released. 
Discuss it. I'd appreciate an open discussion.

Andreas Jellinghaus <aj@dungeon.inka.de> said:
> > Mark Baker:
> > > Having your database seems like a reasonable idea, but it needs 
> to be plain > text which might be slow; a db file would be faster but 
> I want to be able to > change it in a text editor.  As a compromise 
> it could use the same system than the sendmail aliases: The user make 
> changes in a plain text file (/etc/aliases), but the  application 
> 'compiles' this file as a db database (/etc/aliases.db)? 

A database of some sort (e.g. tsearch dump) would be easy to implement,
but I don't like the idea too much. May be later (OK, statting the text
file first is a viable way in-between).

David


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