Some weeks ago, i started (undesired) a discussion[1,2] about how and why i think the base-files should get a refurbishment. I send several patches as a proposal, but it was not possible to apply them - the reasons are:
- the code changed nearly nothing, only the style - some people mentioned, that the old code was not good, but it worked since years and changes in base are risky - it is not clear, if lowmem-targets are part of openwrt (most of the patches uses lower mem and are faster) - there is no official coding style, that enforces the use of specific ways how to do things - i mixed the reasons, why i wrote the new code Here some words about this: I like openwrt. There are many concepts i want to see in other distros. I'm not satisfied with many scripts and the way how people make a solution. Ofcourse this is my personal opinion, but there are good reasons to speak loud: - clean code (not obfuscated) This should be the most imported thing. It helps to debug. It lowers the entry-border. It makes it easier to change the code and do refactoring. (i have some ideas to modularize the functions/files, at the moment we often include files which we don't need) It does NOT help to make a oneliner and 1000 users asks themself: what does THIS line? [3] But while we are at it: - don't fork, if not needed. examples from /etc/init.d/compache: [ "`cat /proc/swaps | grep 'ramzswap0'`" != "" ] && swapoff /dev/ramzswap0 better use: fgrep -q "ramzswap0" /proc/swaps || ... - use function_names to say what you want to do - use better shell builtins, instead of invoking another language (e.g. awk, sed, lua) - only if there is no other option - using of shell builtins, leads to lower mem usage and are (mostly) faster In the first discussion, i explained that awk is big and should not be in base-files. During experiments it turned out, that these are only some kilobytes. But the real reasons are explained above. The next step can be: - make an official coding-style (at the moment much is mixed) - make an offical way, how to solve typical problems in scripts - make "base-files (experimental)" which can be selected in menuconfig and i will maintain it. if people select it, they know the risk - vote for or against it - refactoring/refactoring/refactoring and try new concepts/ideas Thanks for your time, Bastian [1] https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2011-January/009171.html [2] https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2011-January/009273.html [3] https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2011-January/009199.html _______________________________________________ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
