[RFC] Rewriting sade(8)

[Kris Moore]

On 04/08/2010 12:23, Ivan Voras wrote:
> On 04/08/10 14:01, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
>    
>> Alexander Leidinger<Alexander at Leidinger.net>  writes:
>>      
>>> I think this is more complicated than to refactor the interesting part
>>> into a backend with an API which both tools can use. This would also
>>> allow someone to write a GUI program (e.g. for PC-BSD).
>>>        
>> There have been at least three or four attempts to do this in the past.
>> One of them was even fully funded by the FreeBSD Foundation.  They all
>> failed.
>>      
> Since I was involved in one of them (not the Foundation-funded one,
> though; who got that? I don't remember seeing an announcement), I'll
> attempt to share some of my experiences.
>
> One experience is that, unless both components (the backend and the
> front-end) are done, nobody will use either.
>
> The second, that it's apparently a given that the backend must be
> written in C to be imported into base - this is a large obstacle for
> doing something that, I think, by definition should be scriptable.
> Apparently noone was/is interested in a Python backend :(
>
> Third, I feel that using a RPC-like network protocol - in my case
> XML-RPC was/is a good idea but it also received too little comments and
> interest.
>
> Fourth, it's bloody hard doing open-source development unless you have
> external funding.
>
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>    

FWIW, I think there's nothing wrong with doing a backend in something other
than C. On the PC-BSD side we've implemented our own new backend / 
frontend installer
scheme, and its working quite nicely now. The backend is written 
entirely in "sh", with no
requirements on any extra libs / programs. This means we can run it on a 
100% pure FreeBSD
base, and not need some 3rd party utilities to be included.

http://trac.pcbsd.org/browser/pcbsd/trunk/pc-sysinstall


Anyway, it now supports ZFS, glabel, geli, gmirror, gpart, GPT, 
script-able installs, etc and is still under
heavy development to improve upon said features. Our C++ front-end is 
written in QT4, which
of course is great for the PC-BSD side. If we could get somebody to 
write a curses front-end
then it may be possible to use it for FreeBSD as well.
(It already supports doing Vanilla FreeBSD-only installations)


-- 
Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
iXsystems