On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Max Maischein wrote:
[ ... ]
> In my opinion, a script should ask questions with sensible
> defaults and never delve into an endless loop, asking the
> same questions again and again. Either quit on the first
> time around, or detect that there is no user to
> communicate with anyway and bail out if the sensible
> defaults don't work. Which is additional work, yes, but
> can be expected IMO.
There is no sensible default for the location of the Apache
binary that would work on all platforms, and hence none is
assumed. Also, not assuming a default ensures that the
value given is the one the user really wants - this is
important because the final values are saved to a
configuration file, to be used in later invocations.
The loop is there so that if a user gives a non-existent
location, the dialogue informs the user that no such program
exists, and asks again - this is for convenience, in that,
for example, a simple mistyping of the location won't force
the user to start all over again.
I suggested thinking of this in terms of patching the
automated testing script in order that similar dialogues
with other packages won't cause your machine to lock up.
If you like, there's a mailing list:
http://httpd.apache.org/test/
for Apache-Test where we could discuss specific changes
to this package along the lines you raise.
--
best regards,
randy
