[arch-general] Fifa: Flexible Installer Framework for Arch linux

[Aaron "Hussein" Griffin]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter at plaetinck.be> wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 16:17 +0100, Thomas Bächler wrote:
>> > What I'm doing now is moving:
>> > - the UI logic into lib-ui.sh (eg you can ask questions and inform the
>> > user in a mode-agnostic way. set a variable to use dialog mode or plain
>> > cli)
>> > - the backend "real work" code into libraries like lib-pacman,
>> > lib-network etc.
>> > - the flow control functionality in a (draft of) an 'interactive'
>> > profile (what might someday become a replacement of the current setup
>> > script)
>>
>> This sounds awesome to me.
>>
> Just to clarify: I'm not aiming for 100% separation of backend and ui
> logic anymore, because that would make it much more complicated then
> it's worth.  The 'flow control' part however is now (supposed to be)
> entirely separated into the 'interactive procedure' though. (see my
> previous mail for detailed explanation). (But yes, it's still
> awesome ;-)
>
>
>> Just a thought: If you want to, you could also move the whole code into
>> a more sophisticated language (Python, C, C++) if bash is too restricted
>> for you.
>
> Ironically, I used to be a decent programmer and sucky at sh/bash,  but
> being a system engineer for more then a year improved my shell scripting
> skills a lot, the other languages have suffered from lack of
> attention :-)
> I do think that bash is a good language for something like this though.
> There's a lot of interaction with other base tools and it's very
> accessible to end-users.  As long as bash' limits are not holding back
> development, I think it's best to stick with it. (+ I really wouldn't
> want to port the current installer to another language.  Refactoring it
> in the same language is already hard enough :P )
>
>
> PS: I actually managed to install a system now with the ported
> interactive procedure, it breaks while finding the root device but at
> least we got this far :-)

Screenshots, or it didn't happen!