My suggestions
I've just subscribed to this mailing list. I have very limited deleloper
skills but I have some suggestions about the design of debian system.
Here they are:
The main idea I want to propose is more integration of the system into a
filesystem namespace...
The first is the naming scheme of the debian packages. Debian uses names
that consists of several parts separated with `-' charecter. I can
suggest to use / as a sepparator and to store apt database as a
directory tree.
The following files must be stored in the /var/lib/apt/packages for
instance:
...
xfce4/core
xfce4/wm
...
so to install smth administrator must point an apt utility to the file
under this directory. I think it's more comfortable to use such tree
rather then use apt-cache search apt-get install combination
The assosiated suggestion is to develope some general tool that will
fill the lack of set operations in unix file system. This tool must
build the directory tree depending on the keywords (sets, when each file
is determined by the set intersection) like the debian menu system
does... So for example administrator will be able to build alternative
directory trees of packages and directly use them for installing. This
tool also will be usefull for normall users to organize their files...
The next... Unix have a good file permisions managment system, but now
only root can manage the acces to files. But I think normal users must
have right to manage the access to files owned/created by them. The only
thing they need to do it is the abillity to create groups. So my
suggestion is to change users, groups managment in Debian.. So here is
my scheme, I can suggest to implement something similar...
Every user in the system must have one file under /etc/users the
contents of it is not essansial, so some script like update-users must
be used to generate /etc/passwd. The special user `group' must exist and
every group must have this user as a member. The directory tree must be
build under /etc/groups wich will contain every group in the system as a
subdirectory. Every directory that represent a group must include a
symlink to the group user file and a symlinks to the other group
members. And at last groups can contain subgroups. So the following
directory tree
./audio/group
./audio/vir
./cdrom/group
./cdrom/vir
./vir/group
./vir/vir
./vir/friends/group
./vir/friends/zap
./vir/friends/nastya
./vir/friends/vir
will give us following groups (each line containing the word group):
audio --- vir is a member
cdrom --- vir is a member
vir --- vir is a member
vir-friends --- vir, zap and nastya are members
Slashes are replaced py `-' by convention. Simple scripts can be used to
generate /etc/group file. The point is that user vir will be the owner
of a vir directory (administrator must give him this rights on account
creation) and vir will be able to create any subdirectories and so
subgroups (prefixed with `vir-'). So administrator leaves determined
part of the groups namespace for users and users can easilly manage
permitions to their files...
--
Victor Nazarov
Reply to: