Fwd: GSOC: Qt front-ends

[Chris Rees]

On 24 April 2013 18:30, Justin Edward Muniz <justin.muniz at maine.edu> wrote:
>> Our kernel is actually very easy to configure, so I'm not convinced that
>> it's needed; you may be thinking of Linux's menuconfig, but I think that is
>> because of the complexity.
>>
>> Chris
>
>
>
> While configuring the kernel may be trivial to someone who understands the
> process and their systems needs, I am thinking of a software tool that goes
> beyond the scope of the occasional generating of a kernel configuration
> file.
>
> Imagine that you have a number of systems and you want to run kernels that
> are lighter weight than the generic kernel but each system has its own
> individual needs. A GUI could help manage a large number of custom kernels,
> and provide access to convenient access to features such as specifying a
> kernel to load on the next boot only for testing. You could even configure
> the custom kernel profiles to be built from separate source directories.
>
> That is not to say of course that everyone else using x11 couldn't benefit
> from it as well. The application could help avoid compatibility issues
> during kernel installation by comparing the kernel's version to the version
> of world. Some helpful aids would be visual categorization of options as
> well as option descriptions, caveats, and hyperlinks to more in depth
> information.
>
> As for its place in Google Summer of Code, you could be right, it may not be
> enough to dedicate such resources. I know however that I would use it, maybe
> others would as well? Thank you for your advice once again Chris! What do
> you think about the other utilities?

I think the interface to pkgng and freebsd-update are still
interesting; at least more worthwhile than the kernel configuration
one.

I think the pkgng one has the edge, since packages are updated far
more often than base, and it's easier to track base.

Now you are at a stage where you should make your own decision; which
one looks the most interesting to you?  Once you decide on an area of
interest, you can just start hacking :)

Chris