Re: [rox-devel] menu-click configure an App

Thomas Leonard wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 12:41:14AM +0100, 
> p.carsten-KvP5wT2u2U0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > 
> > Hello! 
> > Would anybody like to have a "Configure" menu entry for appropriate apps
> > and like to hack on config4gnu for that?
> > 
> > Config4gnu (or CFG for short) takes a meta-config-definition file for an
> > app and can then be used with generic fronteds (command line, GUI, etc.)
> > to configure every option of that app.
> 
> We already have a similar system (Options.xml) which describes the GUI for
> the options. What is the advantage to using C4G for this?

Amazing, no matter how sweet the candy one wants, rox has already got it! ;-)

(Looking through the wiki I also liked AppDirs, see my other post)

Seriously though, nice Options!

I will try to provide a rough comparison to CFG:

As CFGs primarily focus is on configuring arbitrary system settings or services 
it offers support for different config file formats. In a CFG XML 
meta-config-definition file (analogous to Options.xml) there is also a file 
format specified. For example "INI-style" for smb.conf (samba fileserver). CFGs 
meta-config-definition files do not primarily define the GUI but the config 
file semantics and which syntax parser to use.

If used in applications like the rox-options the analogous to 
rox.setup_app_options() in CFG would, in this example, accesses the settings in 
/etc/smb.conf.

To general configuration tool frondends all config files known by CFG are 
presented on a per option grained level in an XML-tree no matter what format 
the file has and where it resides. Each option with possible values, defaults, 
comments and optionally additional info from man pages etc. Multipurpose 
Frondends are basically only XML editors that comunicate with CFGs middlelayer. 
See the screenshots:
http://config4gnu.sourceforge.net/screenshots
A speciality are forms and wizards that can be defined in 
meta-config-definitons to describe a generic GUI or wizards to create new 
configuration entities like for example new samba shares.

-Peter




CFG Project Goals
-------------

- Provide multiple interfaces (command line, web-based, GUI, LDAP, etc.) that 
allow users/admins to modify configuration, with relevant documentation (man 
pages, etc.) integrated into the interface.

- Allow developers to easily create configuration interfaces for their software 
which will be automatically recognized by our system when the software is 
installed.

- Standardize the different types of configuration files (INI-style, 
flat/delimited text, Apache-style, etc.) and provide parsers and unparsers for 
all styles.

- Include ways for different OS's and distributions to tailor the system to 
their needs.

- Retain the native human-editable config files in /etc as the authoritative 
copy of system configuration and avoid mangling comments and indentation.

- Create a system which is general enough to allow a high level of flexibility 
but also specialized enough so that the specific task of configuration can be 
done efficiently.



Advantages of the CFG Project
-----------------------

 Everyone knows there are many other configuration tools for Linux, the most 
popular of which are Webmin and Linuxconf. Each distribution also often creates 
their own config tools, and many software projects provide config tools (SWAT 
for Samba, etc.). This results in duplicated work and inconsistent, buggy 
interfaces that constantly need to be re-written. 


The CFG Project changes this. Our system is based a three-tier approach with a 
powerful and flexible middle layer that handles the details and joins the 
backends which parse and unparse the config files with the frontends which 
provide various ways for users to edit their configuration. All this is done 
using XML to exchange data and the behavior is controlled by special 
meta-configuration files which determine how the middle layer behaves for each 
specific configuration task. 


That means in order to alter or extend our system, you simply add a new or 
updated meta-configuration file and the system recognizes it automatically 
without having to recompile or re-write any parts of the layers themselves. In 
that sense, software developers may think of our system as a type of 
sophisticated API they can use to configure their software. We plan to create 
tools to make it easy for developers to write meta-configuration files for 
existing software. 


End users never need to worry about all of this, since we hope software 
projects and distributions will take some or all of the responsibility for 
maintaining the meta-configuration files once the initial versions have been 
created by us. Users will only see a single consistent interface using their 
choice of frontends, while still being able to edit the config files by hand at 
times. 






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