From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Apr 10 8:27: 6 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from nef.ens.fr (nef.ens.fr [129.199.96.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A037937B422 for ; Tue, 10 Apr 2001 08:27:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Rahul.Siddharthan@lpt.ens.fr) Received: from corto.lpt.ens.fr (corto.lpt.ens.fr [129.199.122.2]) by nef.ens.fr (8.10.1/1.01.28121999) with ESMTP id f3AFR0q20798 for ; Tue, 10 Apr 2001 17:27:00 +0200 (CEST) Received: from (rsidd@localhost) by corto.lpt.ens.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) id RAA35095 for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Tue, 10 Apr 2001 17:27:00 +0200 (CEST) Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 17:27:00 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: ESR's CML2 Message-ID: <20010410172659.R14673@lpt.ens.fr> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I was reading ESR's announcement of the 1.0 release of his CML2 (Configuration menu language), which he wrote for the linux kernel: http://lwn.net/daily/cml2-1.0.php3 The main web page of the project is at http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/cml2/ It looked interesting to me. Is there any possibility that it could be used in FreeBSD, to make configuration easier for beginners? The problem he mainly wants to address is to make linux kernel configuration easier for beginners, by giving easy choices to them which will automatically track all dependent choices (via an X-based menu if they want), while at the same time not taking any power away from the experts. But he has designed it as a language (using python) without any specific reference to the linux kernel; so (he says) the Embedded Debian project has adopted it for both kernel and package configuration, and someone's trying to port Mozilla to it too. It seems to me that there are at least three things in FreeBSD which could benefit from this: (a) kernel configuration (b) system installation (c) the ports collection All three are pretty easy if you know what you're doing, but perhaps beginners find the process a bit challenging. The ports/packages collection does a good job of tracking dependencies, but there are problems. The most common is when you are installing A, which depends on B version 1.2, but you already have B version 1.0. If B 1.0 can be cleanly replaced with B 1.2, the system should just yank out B 1.0 altogether and replace it with B 1.2 (eg, upgrading from gtk 1.2.8 to 1.2.9) but if it cannot be simply replaced, it should install the two separately without conflict. Often it doesn't do the correct thing, and over a span of a year or so a lot of things can get messed up if you aren't careful. Maybe it can even lead to a unified ports tree, with diffs based on which BSD you're running, or something? I don't know how easily such problems can be addressed with Raymond's scheme or what sort of work is already going on, but this looked like an interesting thought, anyway. I may have some spare time in summer to play around with such things. Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message