2010-08-17 03:06, Jacob Peddicord skrev: > Hello devel-discuss, > > Recently I've finished up a Google Summer of Code project relating to > system service management. These packages are jobservice and > jobs-admin, and you may have heard of them on the Planet. If you're > curious, install jobs-admin in maverick and give things a go from > System > Administration > System Jobs. > > I've written a short post[1] on SLS (service-level settings), a > framework that makes it easy for users to change basic config options. > An analogy is that jobservice and SLS are the PackageKit of service > management; that is to say that they should work the same on many > different platforms where supported. > > If you maintain a system service (ie, you install something into > /etc/init.d or /etc/init) I would love if you would take a look at > that post and the short screencast[2][3]. I promise the video won't > bore you too much. :) If that piques your interest, I'd *really* > appreciate if you took a peek at the full documentation[4] for the > format and provided feedback. > > Furthermore, if you have any comments on the concept of SLS itself or > service settings, please send them my way. We want to make this the > best system for managing services, including integrating jobservice > into other applications to automate some processes. > > Finally, if you maintain a service and are brave, curious, or just > have some free time, why not give writing a quick SLS file a shot? > Give me a ping on IRC (jacob) or email and I'll help you out.
Hi Jacob, I'm not a system service maintainer, but I had to write a few configuration GUIs (and backends) at my previous employment. And so I have a few basic thoughts about it: First, I think it is a very good idea to have some consistency on how different services are configured. I think it will help newcoming users to have a consistent configuration GUI. In addition, integrate it with ConsoleKit, and you might a secure way of letting different users configure different services. It doesn't feel really ready to take on much more than the very simplest programs at this point, however. And there is, or will probably be, a scalability problem as the number of programs require their setting types, and this probably requires additional thought. One missing feature, I believe, is to be able to handle sections in ini-style files. In simplest form, this just means being able to specify a section name in the "parse" tag, but if you look at e g samba, you want to be able to add and remove entire sections, and then configure those sections. Later, you'll find that one service wants you to add a list of icons instead of strings, another needs a grid, yet another wants you to order strings a specific order (i e the strings are fixed but the order configurable), yet another wants you to be able to add and remove sets of settings, someone wants a color box, another wants advanced grouping of settings, etc etc. You might end up having a very bloated SLS schema, trying to cover every case in the world. There is also the update mechanism, is there any way in SLS to specify what to do when committing settings to make them take effect in the configured service? Also, it would be nice with thought through help, i e probably a pointer to some help file, and/or additional hints available when selecting the actual setting. So to sum up - good job so far, but you are probably just getting started :-) -- David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd. http://launchpad.net/~diwic -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss