[ PLEASE remove debian-devel-announce from replies ]
Before I get into this and make some people really angry, let me say that
if I do this, I do it only in Debian's epic4 package. This isn't going
to affect you unless you use my .deb's unless someone else adopts this
idea for their stuff. Okay? Good.
The ircII-based clients already use /etc/irc/ for storing things like the
serverlist as a result of a discussion on -policy[1]. I want to create a
file, either be /etc/irc/autoload.epic4 or /etc/irc/epic4/autoload (your
opinions wanted), which will load a script[2] if you have neither .ircrc
nor .epicrc in your home directory.
The rationale for this is simple, epic's a great client but sucks without
a script. If you don't have a script, it's essentially no different than
ircII. Many have commented to that effect.
I've been less than thrilled about adding a default script because of
package bloat, etc, and because the best script for the job IMO would
probably be splitfire, which I don't much like. Instead, I can just
write a SCRIPTS.Debian file or something explaining how to make a script
use Debian's /etc/alternatives configuration, etc. The sysadmin then can
install one or several scripts and I can be done with it. =>
Questions:
Is this a bad idea in general or do I have the right idea?
/etc/irc/*.epic4 (2 files planned) or /etc/irc/epic4/* ? If I go with
the latter it would be possible to have default configurations for
scripts there. Of course this will probably require some minor amount
of tinkering with the scripts to use it, so it's probably a mixed
blessing.
I have two obvious ways to do this. I can either add a load command to
the global script, or I can make use of the fact that the global script
loads "local" which is guaranteed not to get touched upstream and will
always be loaded by global. This means a quick symlink and I'm set.
Of course, if you have a /usr/share/epic4/script/local already, it
could get messy. I'm leaning towards modifying global, but given that
this autoload script would be conffile anyway, it would serve the
purpose local does anyway.
Virtual package epic4-script suggested by epic4 which other scripts
would provide?
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer
PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
<dark> "Let's form the Linux Standard Linux Standardization Association
Board. The purpose of this board will be to standardize Linux
Standardization Organizations."
[1] It was determined that we currently have no way to share a conffile
among packages and pending someone coming up with a better idea, we
should create /etc/irc/servers in postinst with the default servers
in it (usually irc.debian.org:6667) if it doesn't exist, but leave it
be otherwise. The file cannot be listed as a conffile because of
this, but it'll never be overwritten anyway.
[2] The script itself:
# Purpose:
# Load a system default script if .epicrc and .ircrc don't exist in
# the user's home directory.
#
# Copyright/License:
# Written by Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>, considered to be
# in the public domain. C'mon, the header is longer than the
# script here, you didn't expect some sort of lame license did you?
#
# Changes:
# 23 May 1999 - Initial (probably only) release.
#
@ _loadscript = [/etc/irc/default_script.epic4]
unless ( fexist(~/.epicrc)==1 || fexist(~/.ircrc)==1 )
{
if (fexist($_loadscript)==1)
{
load $_loadscript
}
}
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