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To: hosokawa@mt.cs.keio.ac.jp (HOSOKAWA Tatsumi)
cc: keithl@wakko.gil.net, chat@freebsd.org, config@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Cursing the sky (was: Commerical applications ...) 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 21 Jan 1997 15:03:00 +0900."
             <199701210603.PAA20592@lenlen.mt.cs.keio.ac.jp> 
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 04:13:24 -0800
Message-ID: <14442.853848804@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-freebsd-config@freebsd.org
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> No perl?  I like it but I admit it's too fat :-) (my second favourite
> is C/Tk).

Well, I hate to admit that BSDI went the perl route and so far they
seem to really like it.  They did, somehow, manage to get a kernel and
a single perl interpreter onto an installation floppy but damned if I
know how they did it.  Perhaps they're using a specially hacked and
trimmed down version of perl, something which would be pretty evil
for us but is a *possibility* I suppose. :-)

I guess what I'm saying is that if someone really wants to use PERL in
their install solution and is willing to do the work, I'll bite the
bullet and learn the damn thing (and I hate PERL! :-).

However, I think that TCL would result in a lot more people on these
mailing lists being happy with the final solution.  It's small, it's
easy to parse (wow, a regular and well-defined syntax! :-) and a
version which supports dynamic loading of modules is already in our
tree.  To get that with PERL we'd have to import perl5 instead of
perl4, and that's a political battle which I don't care to fight at
this time at all. :-)

> I started working on translating LINT config file to SGML file and
> implementing the translator (using sgmls with DTD file) of this
> meta-config file to ordinary config files.
> 
> I think this enables us to make automated config file generator tools
> like Linux's menuconfig and xconfig smartly.

Hmmm. I'd be interested in hearing more about this, as would I'm sure
others here.

> I think that the same approach can be used for automatic and
> semi-automatic system configuration tool for network and storage
> management.
> 
> What do you think about it?

I think we need to hear more about the details of this approach! :-)

> (I'm planning to port sysinstall to X11 :-).  I think it's not
> difficult to install FreeBSD from X interface like RedHat Linux)

Yikes!  Sysinstall is a very poor target and has gone strictly into
maintainance mode (I think we still have your japanese patches to
integrate, but those are still missing from the last freefall cleanup
of incoming).  If you want to do a CUI/GUI sysinstall, you should join
us in developing the new system rather that prolonging the life of
the old. :-)

					Jordan