Universal Select Tool *Abstract Universal Select Tool is an utility to manage system configuration. This tool is similar to the unmaintained eselect utility of Gentoo or Exherbo's eclectic. The idea is to create a tool that manages both system settings and user settings with profile creation possibilities. The utility will use mostly concepts from "modules", "softenv", and both "eselect" and "eclectic". *Objective The objective of this project is to create a unified configuration utility for gentoo. Why this new tool and not eselect? Gentoo has a set of configuration utilities (eselect-* *-config) that work with global environment settings regarding the system and therefore needed to be contradicted by hand by users to fulfill their need to change it's own defaults. This is a common problem within clusters, shared-servers, etc, basically all multi-user, multi-profile, multi-use environments. Creating this utility makes environment profiles, slots, virtuals and multi-implementations easier to manage, create and manipulate by developers, sysadmins and users. The current available solutions do not work this way and therefore enlarging the gap between configuration unification, profiling and usability. *General Ideas Some modules that this project wants to unite do much more than just update environment variables. Further discussion should be done with all participants in such projects to check if a general tool can be created and if not, what can be split as a module and what can not. Modules will need to be thought in a way that no further *-config and eselect-* utilities need to exist anymore. These utilities will be replaced by a module of it's own that allows the universal select tool to manipulate all available configuration that is specified by the module. Modules will not only specify to the universal select tool what can be changed but also how to make those changes. Modules will be indexed in it's own database file for faster searching, switching, and profile creation and managing. This database will need to be updated by portage upon each successful module-able emerge. *Key features Merging all eselect-* and *-config modules into one unified framework. Quick and easy plugin of new modules when a virtual or several slots of one package exist to allow modul-ization of several packages. Fast. Per-User and Per-System module settings. Create profiles of module settings, Per-User and Per-System. Possible new modules: mysql, tex, intel compiler suite, fortran, etc. *Deliverables an application (probably uselect) and the corresponding ebuild documentation module examples ebuild examples patch to portage (possibly) Programming language is yet to be defined but possibly python, bash or C. *Timeline April 20 - May 23 Get to know code/documentation/use of "modules", "softenv", "eselect", "ecletic" and "portage". Highlight base features and algorithms to reimplement/discard. Make decisions regarding the base of the aplication such as databases, module format/handling, dependencies in portage and user environment handling. Set up a gentoo virtual machine that can be replicated to use as clean sandboxes for testing througout the development with various environments. May 23 - July 3 Choose and setup the build environment for the new utility. Begin implementation of the base features and module system. Create sample modules. (Mid Milestone) July 4 - July 30 Retouch wathever is needed. Implement Portage's module handling part. Create sample ebuild. (Final Milestone) August 1 - August 17 Tests Re-touching Documentation *Biography My name is Sérgio Almeida and I live in Lisbon, Portugal. I am 22 years old and Informatics have always been my interest since I first got in touch with a friend's Comodore. I study informatics & computers science engineering @ Instituto Superior Técnico and plan to get my MsC degree in 2012. My main interests are distributed systems and computer/network security. I started working as a sysadmin at the age of 16 at VirtualGames, a game server provider for fun and without any profit. I am currently working as sysadmin at my University's Physics Investigation department. Besides this i play bass in a rock band, «don't disturb my circles» and I enjoy listening, composing, recording and mixing music.