FreeBSD 9

['Frank Shute']

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 05:31:00PM -0800, Devin Teske wrote:
>
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message----- From: 'Frank Shute'
> > [mailto:frank at shute.org.uk] Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 4:52
> > PM To: Devin Teske Cc: 'Chad Perrin';
> > freebsd-questions at freebsd.org; Dave Robison Subject: Re: FreeBSD 9
> > 
> > On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 02:36:29PM -0800, Devin Teske wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > I believe the "difficulty in maintenance" stems primarily
> > > > > from the fact that the existing partition editor MAY have to
> > > > > be entirely rewritten to accommodate other root filesystem
> > > > > types (but even that's not entirely true -- if done right).
> > > > >
> > > > > Other than that, it's most likely just FUD and misperception
> > > > > that sysinstall(8) is either (a) hard to maintain or (b)
> > > > > hard to extend.  -- Devin
> > > >
> > > > To quote the manpage for sysinstall:
> > > >
> > > > BUGS
> > > >
> > > > <snip>
> > > >
> > > >      This utility is a prototype which lasted several years
> > > >      past its expira- tion date and is greatly in need of
> > > >      death.
> > > >
> > > >      There are a (great) number of undocumented variables.
> > > >      UTSL.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Perspective.
> > >
> > > Let's take a look at the commit history for this manual.
> > 
> > Let's not. Let us discuss the merit of what the manpage says.
> > 
> > "There are a (great) number of undocumented variables."
> > 
> > From my reading of postings to this list and stable@,
> 
> yet not -sysinstall@ (?!)

Didn't know it existed until now!

> 
> > it was felt that sysinstall couldn't be extended without a total
> > re-write, that seems to suggest that the manpage is right and is
> > not FUD.
> > 
> 

> I disagree. Just because you document something doesn't make it
> true.
> 
> I've already discussed the fact that the first line you quoted ("in
> need of death") is 15+ years old and we have no way of tracking its
> origin and thus can't extrapolate why on-Earth it was put into a
> "release-quality product" in the first place.
> 
> The second line you quote (which was added 2 years 10 months ago via
> SVN r189754 by grog@) has everything to do with highlighting the
> fact that sysinstall(8) is highly scriptable through a large number
> of under-documented dispatch keywords and nothing to do with the
> "total re-write" issue you're discussing.
> 
> Plus, the keywords are a lot more documented than you think. If a
> dispatch word is not documented, there's probably good cause (a
> great number of the dispatch keywords are meant for internal use
> only and their documentation would merely invite strangeness only
> reserved for people that know what they're doing -- i.e.  they can
> read the code to learn what their function is).
> 
> However, I will concede to the fact that the number of dispatch
> keywords that are documented versus ones that CAN be used is only
> about 33%.
> 
> Here's how I generated that number...
> 
> awk '/VAR_/{sub(/[^"]*"/,"");sub(/"$/,"");print}'
> /usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/sysinstall.h | sh -c 'while read var;do
> zgrep -q "\<$var\>" /usr/share/man/man8/sysinstall.8.gz &&
> varcount=$((${varcount:-0}+1));done;echo $varcount'
> 
> This returns the number of variables -- as-defined-as a dispatch
> keyword in sysinstall.h -- are present in the manual.
> 
> In 9.0-RELEASE, it returns "33" for me.
> 
> In contrast with the number of dispatch keywords, obtainable by:
> 
> awk '/VAR_/{print}' | wc -l
> 
> which returns 105 for me ... minus the "markedly internal keywords"
> which begin with "_"...
> 
> awk '/VAR_/{print}' | grep -vc '"_'
> 
> We see 101 supposedly-usable dispatch keywords which brings us to
> about 33% documentation.
> 
> However, I will re-iterate...
> 
> The first quote you pulled from the man-page was made 15+ years ago,
> the second quote you pulled was from 2+ years ago and the two are
> not related. The first declares some inferred quality about the code
> itself and the second simply states that the variable keywords are
> under-documented. One not-necessarily imply the other or vice-versa.
> -- Devin
> 

Devin, damn you with your logic, sensible arguments &
*statistics*....[spit] ;)

You've obviously got more invested in sysinstall than I have. It was
always a thing that I just muddled through to get a minimal system up
& running.

But if you're using the scripting interface then I can see that you
would want something of equivalent functionality in the replacement,
bsdinstall.


Regards,

-- 

 Frank

 Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html


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