Re: Task-help & Wizards

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

> > one that actually exists) sooner or later if
> > you want to get anything done. You can't go anywhere without some basic
> > assumptions about the configuration of the target system.  
> The idea will be targetting a CORE compliant distribution, that way we'd be
> targetting multiple distributions, not just one.

sounds like a nice idea, but you'll have a hard time finding a pragmatic
definition that will give you more than one fully compliant distribution
...
 > 
> > It's a bad idea. Why ? For a start, RPM can't interactively place files. 
> > So your packages aren't going to be in RPM format. 
> I wasn't thinking about file placement (that's pretty much controlled by
> the FSS).  There are still other options (to some programs) that shouldn't be
> forced on a user.. such as color syntax (on or off?) vim... or number of beads
> in xabacus.

Oh, I see. Yes, this is feasible. But you'd probably need the "wizard" to
run in console mode. I guess if you wanted to get really fancy, you could
check to see if $DISPLAY is defined and run a tcl  script if so ... but
you don't want installation to depend on the GUI ( this is about as
"non-compliant " as you could get ... )

> > You need to come up with something that is going to work with the existing
> > packaging mechanisms. RPM and wizards are _highly incompatible ... 
> There can't be an extention added to RPM that runs a wizard asking for
> configuration options and then modifies the necessary configuration files?

No extension needed for what you are talking about above ... you can just
run a script which asks the user questions and edits files. Tools like sed
can fairly easily make multiple edits "on the fly" .

-- Cheers .

** Donovan