Re: Configuration management, revision 3
On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > First, you try not to do that in the postinsts. Look at how M$ forms most
> > of it's configuration and you don't see this. A change of what you want to
> > ask and how you phrase it can likely advoid many of these cases.
>
> Look again. Microsoft has gotten very fond of wizards, which are basically
> the same thing: you ask a question, look at the answer and decide which
> question you want to ask next.
Yes this is true, but wizards tend to short-cut process, not perform
configuration [well they do configure as a side effect, but not
completely]
A simple example would be the printer install wizard. It asks if you print
from dos, if so it captures the port then it asks if you want to print a
test page then goes and installs the driver.
We can rewrite this sort of logic by using a tree structure ala:
printers/Foo Printer/Driver= BLAH
printers/LPT1 = foo Printer # This is the 'print from dos' query
Most wizards I have seen use thier questions to hide configurable
parameters, you would not store 'printer from dos' as a configuration
paramater.
I strongly suspect that if we take a carefull look at what the
configuration scripts are asking we will find this is not a major hurdle
for MOST things - and a such should not be the central focus of any
proposal.
> > Having a progmatic type script does not aleviate this problem, you still
> > have exactly the same situation when you have a pre-initialized database.
> > Remember with a description of the field you still have progmatic control
> > over when/what fields are accessed!
>
> So it seems we need something else: a language in which you can describe
> every possibly bit of data you want to use, and a description of a
> decision process to evaluate the answers. I was hoping to avoid this now,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think we can skip that. If a package has super-complex configuartion
then the package can provide a full blown configuration script that can be
'installed' seperately.
Lack of the configuration script should NOT preclude configuration, just
make it more complex. It would play the same role as MS's wizard.
Jason
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