Re: Thoughts on dpkg-cross 2.0 configuration format
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Hello
[I'm forwarding this and previous mails to the list, in hope to hear some
comments]
> > The basic idea is the following.
> > Currently there are two "types" of variables set by dpkg-cross - some
> > are from configuration file, others are hardcoded. I see no rationale
> > for having this difference - it only makes it harder to understand how
> > things work.
> > I'd like to see all variables set from the configuration file. Default
> > configuration file should contain basic setup for cross-compilation
> > (i.e. what's currently (mostly) hardcoded), and then have
> > per-(package,mode,arch) parts that set up more particular things
> > (probably changing or undefining some "general" settings). To make
> > such configuration more readable, it should not completely be located
> > in one file, instead "include" and "includeif" statements (ala
> > fontconfig's configuration) should be supported, or even
> > "configuration directory" concept. User configuration file should not
> > be used instead of global, but "includeif"ed at the bottom of global
> > configuration.
> > The syntax may be the same as now, with addition of fourth dimension
> > "arch" (first three are "mode", "package" and "scope"), include
> > statements and undefine statement.
> >
> > If that will be implemented, it's a large enough change to call it
> > dpkg-cross 2.0 :).
>
> I spend some thoungs on the new flexible configuration scheme. My
> fontconfig version uses XML as configuration language. I'm familiar
> with XML (Python, C++) and would like to propose to use Perl as
> configuration languages instead of writting a new parser.
>
> I can imagine that some Perl variables and/or hook functions can
> result in the best compromise in flexibility and functionality. I
> would like to remember the open topic of quoting variables. I do
> not like to make the same misstakes twice.
>
> I think I should collect more opinions on the mailing-list. What
> do you think should we do ?
I don't know, frankly saying. I don't even know if dpkg-cross is actually
used by anyone (besides it's authors) for anything else than running
toolchain-source scripts to build cross compiles for use in projects not
related to debian [those scripts depend on dpkg-cross to get cross-libc].
Anyway, I don't want to use XML for configuration, because XML is not
"human-writable" (it requires too much syntax noise). I mentioned
fontconfig only to describe what is 'includeif'.
Using perl is probably a good idea - many perl programs use perl
configuration files. Probably perl hashes may be used in some intelligent
way instead of multi-dimension (mode/scope/package/arch) current concept.
The only danger with perl configuration that we should avoid is migration
of whole dpkg-cross to configuration files :).
Nikita
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