Gerard Beekmans wrote:
Jeremy Huntwork wrote:
I know nothing about Python. C isn't my strongest suit anymore and I
could probably manage Perl nicely. Ideally there would be a GUI
front-end something slapped up with QT Designer or something, who knows.
That's probably running a little ahead of things, but we should look
into that too and plan for it.
I'm more the opposite, I pretty good with C and Python, but I know very
little of perl.
There are some questions that need answering of course. Do we stick with
XML like we use in nALFS for profiles or do away with it. Who does the
parsing: the client or the daemon who is doing the actual installing.
The daemon could be the dumb app: it receives commands to run to get the
job done. The client figures out what those commands should be. This
makes it possible, and easy, for the user (us humans) to make changes
since you simply cannot install every package the exact same way on
every machine.
I'd say stick with XML, but update the syntax, add new commands and such.
But let me back-up. That's all future talk. If we are to do this, we
have to decide on the backend mechanisms first. Since remote admin is
desired, a TCP based interface is necessary. A client logs into IP X on
Port Y. Then it needs to authenticate itself. That's going to be our
step one. A password of some sort would probably be the simplest and we
can worry about security (ie: man-in-the-middle attacks) later I imagine.
Agreed.
So once the connection is established remote alfsd is ready to receive
instructions. How are those going to be sent and received. That would be
task number two. SOAP was suggested in the past as a possible good fit
for this.
We could always make up our own protocol. Send a start-command-list type
string. Then everything that follows could be a plain old shell script.
End with an end-command-list string, send an execute-command-list and
wait for feedback.
My thought would be to use an established protocol like SOAP or something.
Just some food for thought.
And good food for thought at that. :)
Thomas
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