Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Interaction in ebuilds - bad idea?

[Marius Mauch <genone@gentoo.org>]

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On 04/30/04  Stuart Herbert wrote:

> On Friday 30 April 2004 22:06, Ryan Phillips wrote:
> > I think this is a really good idea.  The ebuild config mechanism is
> > not all that smart.  
> 
> Let's try and make it smarter.
> 
> For example, if we absolutely *have* to ask the user for some
> information for an ebuild - if there's no way to script it (and I
> think there is) - let's make Portage ask all the questions *before*
> downloading and compiling anything.  It makes sense to ask all the
> questions up-front, so that the user doesn't constantly have to check
> his 'emerge -u world' to see if it has stopped to ask a question.
> 
> Imagine running, for an example, 'emerge -u world'.  Once Portage has 
> calculated the dependencies, it could call a function (let's call it 
> pkg_askuser) in each ebuild to gather further information. 
> pkg_askuser would need some library functions to call, so that we can
> standardise the user's experience.  Portage would have to cache the
> information gathered by pkg_askuser, and then it could continue with
> running each ebuild in turn exactly as it currently does.  Each ebuild
> would have access to the cache (how doesn't matter yet), so that it
> can use the right database server, the right user and password, or
> whatever that information needs to be.

I don't like that idea, portage shouldn't be interactive by default. Use
pkg_setup() and tell the user to set the required values via the
environment or with a tool, let's call it gentoo-db-config for now.
That's the standard way to do such things (java-config, gcc-config) and
I don't see why databases should be an exception.

Marius

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