Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Thomas Beaudry]

Why??
Because it's a nice convienence.  And as you noted,
you can turn it off if you don't like it.

I get tired of people objecting against features that
go against their view when they don't have to use it.
Too many people think the Gentoo (or any of the other
distros) should be the way they want it and no other
way.  If they don't want/use a feature, it's a waste
to put it in.  Never mind what anybody else might like.

>From: Peter Ruskin <aoyu93@dsl.pipex.com>
>To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
>Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?
>Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 23:46:43 +0100
>
>Why??
>Whenever I install Mandrake the first thing I do is disable its menu
>system.  It's ugly and IMHO unnecessary.  KDE has a pretty good menu
>system of its own as has gnome.
>
>
>On Wednesday 24 Jul 2002 16:08, Tom Philbrick wrote:
> > Searching the mailing list archives, I see that back in April someone
> > asked about automatic menus. One reply said that it was already being
> > worked on, while others said the opposite. Is anyone currently working
> > on an automatic menu system for gentoo, and if so, what is its status?
> >
> > I ask because I am in the process of porting the debian menu system
> > over to gentoo, but I realized I should stop and see if it is worth the
> > effort. I have the program working as far as I can tell, although I
> > haven't done much testing yet. It still needs a lot of work, but most
> > of that is tailoring it to gentoo rather than debian (rewriting
> > documentation, and making my hacks less of a hack). The build isn't
> > pretty, I see now why debian is not a source distro, but it works for
> > now and I'm working on cleaning it up.
> >
> > For those of you that have never used debian (or mandrake, as menudrake
> > uses the debian menu system under the hood) you can read a good
> > overview of it at:
> > http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/index.html For
> > the system to work, it would require that every package that wants to
> > use a menu must install a menu-method that describes how to generate a
> > menu for that program (these can me borrowed from debian, or written
> > from scratch). It also would require that every application that wanted
> > to be in a menu include a simple menu file that describes what the menu
> > entry should be. Yes that means a lot of packages would need to be
> > updated, but the menufiles take about 30 seconds to write, and are
> > simple enough for anyone to do.
> >
> > So what should I do? Post a new package bug now? Wait until it is
> > completely done? Wait until a better time? Give up in favor of a more
> > mature, or better, solution?
> >
> > -Tom Philbrick
> > _______________________________________________
> > gentoo-dev mailing list
> > gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> > http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>
>--
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>AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+ 512MB.	Kernel: 2.4.18-6mdk-pnr-win4lin
>Linux user #275590 (http://counter.li.org/).   up 1 hour 40 minutes.
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>
>_______________________________________________
>gentoo-dev mailing list
>gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
>http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev




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Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[James Gibson]

I normally don't get involved in 'discussions' like this, but I will this 
time. I, personally, have no opinion on the menus issue, but I would like 
to address your comment about conviences..

I believe that a large number of people don't object so much to new 
features that 'go against their view', as they do to _having to turn them 
off!!_ You want menus? By all means, implement it, but don't make me have 
to turn it off if I don't like it; Make it so that if I don't like it, I 
just don't enable it. 

adding new conviences that are on by default is exactly like opt-out spam; 
Just say No!!

--James

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Thomas Beaudry wrote:

> Why??
> Because it's a nice convienence.  And as you noted,
> you can turn it off if you don't like it.
> 
> I get tired of people objecting against features that
> go against their view when they don't have to use it.
> Too many people think the Gentoo (or any of the other
> distros) should be the way they want it and no other
> way.  If they don't want/use a feature, it's a waste
> to put it in.  Never mind what anybody else might like.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Jon Nelson]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:15:34 -0700 (PDT)
James Gibson <twistedhammer@subdimension.com> wrote:

> I normally don't get involved in 'discussions' like this, but I
> will this time. I, personally, have no opinion on the menus
> issue, but I would like to address your comment about
> conviences..
> 
> I believe that a large number of people don't object so much to
> new features that 'go against their view', as they do to
> _having to turn them off!!_ You want menus? By all means,
> implement it, but don't make me have to turn it off if I don't
> like it; Make it so that if I don't like it, I just don't
> enable it. 
> 
> adding new conviences that are on by default is exactly like
> opt-out spam; Just say No!!

I agree, but think that the menu system (assuming that someday
there is one) will be "activated" by installing menu (or
gentoo-menu or whatever), and that individual ebuilds will still
"install" their little 100 byte description files and so on, but
that nothing will happen unless you install the menu program.

The way it worked in Debian was like that. Don't want menus?
Don't install menu. After 9 years of running 'stable' and you
*suddenly* have a burning need for menus?  install menu. Tada!

Note that menu (at least in Debian) is also capable of dealing
with per-user menu entries.

After looking at the code, it may be worth doing one of the
following:

a) taking the code as-is and just packaging it up (this has been
done, but not committed to CVS)
b) taking the code and modifying it for Gentoo
c) learning from the code and re-implementing in Python (avoids
problems with g++, g++3.x, and so on)

I'm in favor of (a) or (b) (they are really the same) in the
short term, and (c) in the long term, but am not passionate
about any of it, really.

-- 
Jon Nelson
Just because it's not broken doesn't mean we can't take it apart.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Felipe Ghellar]

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I've thought about something in this line, too.

I'd like to propose a way to implement this feature:

1. Include in the ebuilds a new function to generate the appropriate 
menu files (*.desktop files?). Maybe pkg_postinst() could handle this. 
These files could be stored in the /var/db/pkg/<categoy>/<package>/ 
directory, which already exists for installed packages, and maybe inside 
another subdirectory, e.g. 'menus'.

2. Create a new feature in portage, e.g. 'menus', that can be enabled 
via make.conf:
FEATURES="... menus ..."
In the case that this feature is enabled, the menus are automatically 
created when the package is installed. Otherwise, the menu files are 
just left alone in /var/db/pkg/<categoy>/<package>/menus/.

3. Include a tool in gentoolkit to manually create the menus from the 
menu files if someone decides to start using them after having some 
packages installed. Another tool to remove the menus could also be of use.


Just an idea...

[]'s
Felipe.


Jon Nelson wrote:
> I agree, but think that the menu system (assuming that someday
> there is one) will be "activated" by installing menu (or
> gentoo-menu or whatever), and that individual ebuilds will still
> "install" their little 100 byte description files and so on, but
> that nothing will happen unless you install the menu program.
> 
> The way it worked in Debian was like that. Don't want menus?
> Don't install menu. After 9 years of running 'stable' and you
> *suddenly* have a burning need for menus?  install menu. Tada!
> 
> Note that menu (at least in Debian) is also capable of dealing
> with per-user menu entries.
> 
> After looking at the code, it may be worth doing one of the
> following:
> 
> a) taking the code as-is and just packaging it up (this has been
> done, but not committed to CVS)
> b) taking the code and modifying it for Gentoo
> c) learning from the code and re-implementing in Python (avoids
> problems with g++, g++3.x, and so on)
> 
> I'm in favor of (a) or (b) (they are really the same) in the
> short term, and (c) in the long term, but am not passionate
> about any of it, really.
> 


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Tom Philbrick]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 12:50:31AM -0300, Felipe Ghellar wrote:
> These files could be stored in the /var/db/pkg/<categoy>/<package>/ 
> directory, which already exists for installed packages, and maybe inside 
> another subdirectory, e.g. 'menus'.

The program uses /usr/lib/menu to store menufiles, I don't really see
any reason to change that.

> 2. Create a new feature in portage, e.g. 'menus', that can be enabled 
> via make.conf:
> FEATURES="... menus ..."
> In the case that this feature is enabled, the menus are automatically 
> created when the package is installed. Otherwise, the menu files are 
> just left alone in /var/db/pkg/<categoy>/<package>/menus/.
> 
> 3. Include a tool in gentoolkit to manually create the menus from the 
> menu files if someone decides to start using them after having some 
> packages installed. Another tool to remove the menus could also be of use.

All this is a nice idea, but isn't it overkill? On one of my debian
boxes that has over 1000 packages installed the /usr/lib/menu takes up
1.5 megs of space. Gentoo is not exactly small disk friendly, and unless
there is something else I'm missing, wouldn't it be easier to give up
1.5 megs and just install the menufiles whether you use them or not?

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Felipe Ghellar]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
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> The program uses /usr/lib/menu to store menufiles, I don't really see
> any reason to change that.

I wasn't thinking about the menu app from debian (I don't have any 
knowledge about it). I meant to have it as a portage feature. I 
mentioned the /var/db/pkg/<categoy>/<package>/ dir because portage 
already stores some info about the installed packages there...


> All this is a nice idea, but isn't it overkill? On one of my debian
> boxes that has over 1000 packages installed the /usr/lib/menu takes up
> 1.5 megs of space. Gentoo is not exactly small disk friendly, and unless
> there is something else I'm missing, wouldn't it be easier to give up
> 1.5 megs and just install the menufiles whether you use them or not?

Yeah, disk space is not an issue, but I don't think that a script to 
look for menu files under /var/db/pkg/*/*/menus/ and copy them somewhere 
else classifies as 'overkill'. ;)


[]'s
Felipe

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Tom Philbrick]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 04:52:43PM -0500, Jon Nelson wrote:
> I agree, but think that the menu system (assuming that someday
> there is one) will be "activated" by installing menu (or
> gentoo-menu or whatever), and that individual ebuilds will still
> "install" their little 100 byte description files and so on, but
> that nothing will happen unless you install the menu program.
> 
> The way it worked in Debian was like that. Don't want menus?
> Don't install menu. After 9 years of running 'stable' and you
> *suddenly* have a burning need for menus?  install menu. Tada!

In a discussion in the forums many people said they thought a USE menu
variable would be a good idea, but I guess that would take a recompile
of world to _suddenly_ turn on menus. 

> Note that menu (at least in Debian) is also capable of dealing
> with per-user menu entries. 

The system is very flexible. As well as per-user menu entries, it can
turn off menus for certain WMs, for example if an admin thought the KDE
menus were adequate, but wanted generated menus for WindowMaker. Admins
can give "hints" that help shape the way the menu hierarchy is
generated as well.

> After looking at the code, it may be worth doing one of the
> following:
> 
> a) taking the code as-is and just packaging it up (this has been
> done, but not committed to CVS)
> b) taking the code and modifying it for Gentoo
> c) learning from the code and re-implementing in Python (avoids
> problems with g++, g++3.x, and so on)
> 
> I'm in favor of (a) or (b) (they are really the same) in the
> short term, and (c) in the long term, but am not passionate
> about any of it, really.

I pretty much agree, but someone else can have the joy of re-implementing
it in Python. I see no reason that if someone does decide to do it, that
they could not co-exist and let users decide which to install.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Thomas Beaudry]

Maybe I could have phrased that a little better.  The message
I was replying to talked about not wanting it in Gentoo because
he dislikes it and always shuts it off in Mandrake.

I was just saying that that is selfish, to deny others a feature
just so he doesn't have to be bothered with a few minutes time
to get rid of it.

In otherwords, I was responding in the context he created.

Of course if a menu ebuild is implemented, it would be an op-in
just like every other ebuild under Gentoo.  I didn't think it
was necessary to point out the obvious.  Guess I was wrong.


>From: James Gibson <twistedhammer@subdimension.com>
>To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
>Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?
>Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:15:34 -0700 (PDT)
>
>I normally don't get involved in 'discussions' like this, but I will this
>time. I, personally, have no opinion on the menus issue, but I would like
>to address your comment about conviences..
>
>I believe that a large number of people don't object so much to new
>features that 'go against their view', as they do to _having to turn them
>off!!_ You want menus? By all means, implement it, but don't make me have
>to turn it off if I don't like it; Make it so that if I don't like it, I
>just don't enable it.
>
>adding new conviences that are on by default is exactly like opt-out spam;
>Just say No!!
>
>--James
>
>On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Thomas Beaudry wrote:
>
> > Why??
> > Because it's a nice convienence.  And as you noted,
> > you can turn it off if you don't like it.
> >
> > I get tired of people objecting against features that
> > go against their view when they don't have to use it.
> > Too many people think the Gentoo (or any of the other
> > distros) should be the way they want it and no other
> > way.  If they don't want/use a feature, it's a waste
> > to put it in.  Never mind what anybody else might like.
>
>_______________________________________________
>gentoo-dev mailing list
>gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
>http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev




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Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[James Gibson]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, Thomas Beaudry wrote:
> Maybe I could have phrased that a little better.  The message
> I was replying to talked about not wanting it in Gentoo because
> he dislikes it and always shuts it off in Mandrake.
> 
> I was just saying that that is selfish, to deny others a feature
> just so he doesn't have to be bothered with a few minutes time
> to get rid of it.
> 
> In otherwords, I was responding in the context he created.

I must appologize; In large part my response was targeted at the wording,
even though I was pretty certain that you hadn't meant it that way, and 
I'm sorry to have put you between the sights, so to speak.

I've just seen people who honestly felt that they were doing people a
favour by blindly adding new features that are 'opt-out', when the only
real excuse for that model of improvement is to 'make it easier for the
newbies'; a fact which has the inverse effect of making it harder for the
more discerning users.  e.g. you _can_ disable the majority of the
automation cruft that SuSE installs without breaking their system, but in
general it is more of a pain in the neck than it is worth.

> Of course if a menu ebuild is implemented, it would be an op-in
> just like every other ebuild under Gentoo.  I didn't think it
> was necessary to point out the obvious.  Guess I was wrong.

You will have to excuse me.. I've been overlooking the obvious all day 
long. I think I need to get some more sleep. =)

--James

[gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Tom Philbrick]

Searching the mailing list archives, I see that back in April someone
asked about automatic menus. One reply said that it was already being
worked on, while others said the opposite. Is anyone currently working
on an automatic menu system for gentoo, and if so, what is its status?

I ask because I am in the process of porting the debian menu system over
to gentoo, but I realized I should stop and see if it is worth the
effort. I have the program working as far as I can tell, although I
haven't done much testing yet. It still needs a lot of work, but most of
that is tailoring it to gentoo rather than debian (rewriting
documentation, and making my hacks less of a hack). The build isn't
pretty, I see now why debian is not a source distro, but it works for
now and I'm working on cleaning it up.

For those of you that have never used debian (or mandrake, as menudrake
uses the debian menu system under the hood) you can read a good overview
of it at: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/index.html 
For the system to work, it would require that every package that wants
to use a menu must install a menu-method that describes how to generate
a menu for that program (these can me borrowed from debian, or written
from scratch). It also would require that every application that wanted
to be in a menu include a simple menu file that describes what the menu
entry should be. Yes that means a lot of packages would need to be
updated, but the menufiles take about 30 seconds to write, and are
simple enough for anyone to do.

So what should I do? Post a new package bug now? Wait until it is
completely done? Wait until a better time? Give up in favor of a more
mature, or better, solution?

-Tom Philbrick

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Jon Nelson]

All I can say is:

You the Man.

It's been on my List of things TO DO.
[I have a very long, getting longer-every-day, list].

Make available what you've got to us, or send it to me,
and I'll make it available, etc...

Thanks, and let's take a look!

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 11:08:06 -0400
Tom Philbrick <tom@wickidpisa.com> wrote:

> Searching the mailing list archives, I see that back in April
> someone asked about automatic menus. One reply said that it was
> already being worked on, while others said the opposite. Is
> anyone currently working on an automatic menu system for
> gentoo, and if so, what is its status?
> 
> I ask because I am in the process of porting the debian menu
> system over to gentoo, but I realized I should stop and see if
> it is worth the effort. I have the program working as far as I
> can tell, although I haven't done much testing yet. It still
> needs a lot of work, but most of that is tailoring it to gentoo
> rather than debian (rewriting documentation, and making my
> hacks less of a hack). The build isn't pretty, I see now why
> debian is not a source distro, but it works for now and I'm
> working on cleaning it up.
> 
> For those of you that have never used debian (or mandrake, as
> menudrake uses the debian menu system under the hood) you can
> read a good overview of it at:
> http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/index.html
> 
> For the system to work, it would require that every package
> that wants to use a menu must install a menu-method that
> describes how to generate a menu for that program (these can me
> borrowed from debian, or written from scratch). It also would
> require that every application that wanted to be in a menu
> include a simple menu file that describes what the menu entry
> should be. Yes that means a lot of packages would need to be
> updated, but the menufiles take about 30 seconds to write, and
> are simple enough for anyone to do.
> 
> So what should I do? Post a new package bug now? Wait until it
> is completely done? Wait until a better time? Give up in favor
> of a more mature, or better, solution?


-- 
Jon Nelson
Just because it's not broken doesn't mean we can't take it apart.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Peter Ruskin]

Why??
Whenever I install Mandrake the first thing I do is disable its menu 
system.  It's ugly and IMHO unnecessary.  KDE has a pretty good menu 
system of its own as has gnome.


On Wednesday 24 Jul 2002 16:08, Tom Philbrick wrote:
> Searching the mailing list archives, I see that back in April someone
> asked about automatic menus. One reply said that it was already being
> worked on, while others said the opposite. Is anyone currently working
> on an automatic menu system for gentoo, and if so, what is its status?
>
> I ask because I am in the process of porting the debian menu system
> over to gentoo, but I realized I should stop and see if it is worth the
> effort. I have the program working as far as I can tell, although I
> haven't done much testing yet. It still needs a lot of work, but most
> of that is tailoring it to gentoo rather than debian (rewriting
> documentation, and making my hacks less of a hack). The build isn't
> pretty, I see now why debian is not a source distro, but it works for
> now and I'm working on cleaning it up.
>
> For those of you that have never used debian (or mandrake, as menudrake
> uses the debian menu system under the hood) you can read a good
> overview of it at:
> http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/index.html For
> the system to work, it would require that every package that wants to
> use a menu must install a menu-method that describes how to generate a
> menu for that program (these can me borrowed from debian, or written
> from scratch). It also would require that every application that wanted
> to be in a menu include a simple menu file that describes what the menu
> entry should be. Yes that means a lot of packages would need to be
> updated, but the menufiles take about 30 seconds to write, and are
> simple enough for anyone to do.
>
> So what should I do? Post a new package bug now? Wait until it is
> completely done? Wait until a better time? Give up in favor of a more
> mature, or better, solution?
>
> -Tom Philbrick
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Grant Goodyear]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 398 bytes --]

> Why??
> Whenever I install Mandrake the first thing I do is disable its menu 
> system.  It's ugly and IMHO unnecessary.  KDE has a pretty good menu 
> system of its own as has gnome.

Essentially because supporting KDE, GNOME, *box, E, xfce, windowmaker,
etcetera is a real pain with out a unified menu system.  I suspect 
that we're open to better ideas, though. . ..

-g2boojum-



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Corvus Corax]

Am Wed, 24 Jul 2002 11:08:06 -0400
schrieb Tom Philbrick <tom@wickidpisa.com>:

> Searching the mailing list archives, I see that back in April someone
> asked about automatic menus. One reply said that it was already being
> worked on, while others said the opposite. Is anyone currently working
> on an automatic menu system for gentoo, and if so, what is its status?
> 
--- snap


Dont want to bother anyone, but the idea of having to rebuild every ebuild existing for menu data seems not very effective.
wouldnt it be better to provide this extra-information in /usr/portage/<class>/<program>/files/menu.<version>.inf for example?
so the menu information can sometimes be added to any existing ebuild (and every new) and is read out by any menu application gentoo may provide. maybe write a tool, which regularly updates the used menu-files on installed ebuilds in /var/db/pkg, or make menu systems do this on their own.

of course there are many other working methods of doing this, this just an idea. i unfortunately even dont have time to do this myself, but this is a dev-mlist isnt it? <g>

what about a tool, which creates menu information for every known menu-system , KDE, Gnome, debian, ..., ... out of this data (/usr/portage/<class>/<program>/files/menu.<version>.inf) at a regular timebase?
this should be added to portage itself to be run every time one runs "emerge <item> [unmerge]" :-)

just an idea
greetings

Corvus Corax

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Paul de Vrieze]

On Friday 26 July 2002 14:45, Corvus Corax wrote:
>
> Dont want to bother anyone, but the idea of having to rebuild every ebuild
> existing for menu data seems not very effective. wouldnt it be better to
> provide this extra-information in
> /usr/portage/<class>/<program>/files/menu.<version>.inf for example? so the
> menu information can sometimes be added to any existing ebuild (and every
> new) and is read out by any menu application gentoo may provide. maybe
> write a tool, which regularly updates the used menu-files on installed
> ebuilds in /var/db/pkg, or make menu systems do this on their own.
>
I allready saw the problem too, and this might be the answer.
>
> what about a tool, which creates menu information for every known
> menu-system , KDE, Gnome, debian, ..., ... out of this data
> (/usr/portage/<class>/<program>/files/menu.<version>.inf) at a regular
> timebase? this should be added to portage itself to be run every time one
> runs "emerge <item> [unmerge]" :-)

Such a tool is what automatic menus is about. The question is how 
gentoo-specific it will be. I'd like to add to this that I would like the 
possibility to rearange menu items as I see fit, but still have links removed 
when I remove software.

Paul

ps. maybe that feature could be accomplished by using a configuration file 
that describes "relocations"

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Junior Researcher
Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Tom Philbrick]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 02:45:05PM +0200, Corvus Corax wrote:
> Dont want to bother anyone, but the idea of having to rebuild every ebuild existing for menu data seems not very effective.

It would not be very effective, which is why no one, including myself,
has suggested it. The way this would wor is, there is a program called
update-menus that should be called in the ebuild of any program that
installs a menufile. This program reads through /usr/lib/menu/ which
holds all the menufiles that packages have installed, and from these
files it creates a menu for any program that installs a menu-method (a
file describing how to generate a menu for that program). The menufiles
would be added in with the next update to the ebuild (I assume).
Please read the docs for more:
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/index.html

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Jean-Michel Smith]

On Friday 26 July 2002 12:53 pm, Tom Philbrick wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 02:45:05PM +0200, Corvus Corax wrote:
> > Dont want to bother anyone, but the idea of having to rebuild every
> > ebuild existing for menu data seems not very effective.
>
> It would not be very effective, which is why no one, including myself,
> has suggested it. The way this would wor [sic] is, there is a program called
> update-menus that should be called in the ebuild of any program that
> installs a menufile.

It is a tough call where to draw the line of responsiblity.  Do you make 
ebuild maintainers do the work in their ebuild, in which case only those 
whose maintainers have any interest in such a feature will use the feature, 
and the rest will be left out anyway, or do you have an ebuild that maintains 
such files for all the rest of the ebuilds, that a person who is interested 
in the feature can maintain across a bunch of packages (e.g. 
update-menu-configs)?

I think the best solution is one that allows ebuild maintainers to add the 
information for their ebuild if they wish, but also allows other interested 
parties to add information for ebuilds whose maintainers do not have the time 
or interest to maintain that sort of information themselves.

Soemthing like:

#1 an optional ebuild that installs the auto-menu system
#2 an ebuild containing menu information/config info for a plethora of ebuilds 
out there.
#3 a documented means by which individual ebuilds can overlay/override the 
config file in #2 above, or an easy way for ebuild maintainers to submit 
changes/updates to #2 above.

In any event, as long as the feature is optional and not required I have no 
problem with it, though I'm not certain I would use it (I might, though.  I 
was ambivelent with Debian's menu system ... sometimes I liked it, sometimes 
I found it overly convoluted and annoying).

Jean.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Tom Philbrick]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 01:03:27PM -0500, Jean-Michel Smith wrote:
> It is a tough call where to draw the line of responsiblity.  Do you make 
> ebuild maintainers do the work in their ebuild, in which case only those 
> whose maintainers have any interest in such a feature will use the feature, 
> and the rest will be left out anyway, or do you have an ebuild that maintains 
> such files for all the rest of the ebuilds, that a person who is interested 
> in the feature can maintain across a bunch of packages (e.g. 
> update-menu-configs)?
> 
> I think the best solution is one that allows ebuild maintainers to add the 
> information for their ebuild if they wish, but also allows other interested 
> parties to add information for ebuilds whose maintainers do not have the time 
> or interest to maintain that sort of information themselves.
> 
> Soemthing like:
> 
> #1 an optional ebuild that installs the auto-menu system
> #2 an ebuild containing menu information/config info for a plethora of ebuilds
> out there.
> #3 a documented means by which individual ebuilds can overlay/override the 
> config file in #2 above, or an easy way for ebuild maintainers to submit 
> changes/updates to #2 above.

I believe that Mandrake uses the #2 method, but I can not say that I
really like it. My main problem with it is that whoever is in charge of
that one giant package of menufiles is responsible for understanding
every single package in the portage system. If you know what is in a
package then writing a menufile would only take 30 seconds or so, but it
is not so easy when you have to find out what is in a package and what
it does before you can write it.
Keeping the menufiles with the packages they belong to is the more
appropriate thing to do in my oppinion, and we shouldn't let lazy
maintainers change that. If a maintainer does not add a menufile for
their package, then you should submit a bug about it. That way the menu
entry at least gets looked at by the maintainer, in case they disagree
with part of it, or so they kow about it in case they want to chage
something about it in the future.
If after a while we see that it really isn't working out, then we can
always do a big menufile package at that time.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[Noah Justin Norris]

I think a menu system would be nice , also a way to port menu's to other 
systems (ie i have many gentoo systems it took me days to set up menus on one 
system ) just as a side note kde dont like sertain things removed from its 
menu system or put in different folders (ie for example put preferences in 
another directory launch kde control center notice theres nothing there 
anymore (( i had to use samba to copy the menu system back from a working kde 
system lol )) i think a common menu editing tool would be nice / and ebuilds 
that add menu enteries. well im no programer but i would help out in anyway 
possible :) 

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 03:08 pm, Tom Philbrick wrote:
>Searching the mailing list archives, I see that back in April someone
> asked about automatic menus. One reply said that it was already being
> worked on, while others said the opposite. Is anyone currently working
> on an automatic menu system for gentoo, and if so, what is its status?
>
> I ask because I am in the process of porting the debian menu system over
> to gentoo, but I realized I should stop and see if it is worth the
> effort. I have the program working as far as I can tell, although I
> haven't done much testing yet. It still needs a lot of work, but most of
> that is tailoring it to gentoo rather than debian (rewriting
> documentation, and making my hacks less of a hack). The build isn't
> pretty, I see now why debian is not a source distro, but it works for
> now and I'm working on cleaning it up.
>
> For those of you that have never used debian (or mandrake, as menudrake
> uses the debian menu system under the hood) you can read a good overview
> of it at: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/index.html
> For the system to work, it would require that every package that wants
> to use a menu must install a menu-method that describes how to generate
> a menu for that program (these can me borrowed from debian, or written
> from scratch). It also would require that every application that wanted
> to be in a menu include a simple menu file that describes what the menu
> entry should be. Yes that means a lot of packages would need to be
> updated, but the menufiles take about 30 seconds to write, and are
> simple enough for anyone to do.
>
> So what should I do? Post a new package bug now? Wait until it is
> completely done? Wait until a better time? Give up in favor of a more
> mature, or better, solution?
>
> -Tom Philbrick
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