[Mageia-dev] Admin Panel

[Steven Tucker]

Hi all,

well it is very pleasing to see there is discussion about Admin Panel on 
the very day it is uploaded, I hope such enthusiasm continues.

I think I have just learned another lesson, and that is that I should 
have made some sort of announcement prior to dumping the code in svn, so 
here is the belated announcement ....

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We welcome Admin Panel !!

A new piece of software that was proposed some time ago, has now reached 
a minimum amount of code to warrant pushing up to the Mageia repo. It is 
still in very early stages and such has plenty of issues to work out, 
but it is a working start.

Some design decisions that should be known.

1/ It is a general purpose tool, so should be able to be ported to other 
distro's with as little effort as possible.

2/ It is modular. The core of the program simply organises and lists 
available Administration modules which can then be launched. The modules 
themselves are completely stand alone. So the panel should not require 
libraries associated with a particular distro, but the modules 
themselves can. While it would be nice to have a single consistent 
language, modules can be written in Perl, Python, Ruby or C++. If it is 
a choice between a python module for a certain task or no module I 
personally would rather have the python module, if someone is willing to 
write, or rewrite it in Perl then that is also great.

3/ Each module is the work of its individual creator, and so should be 
copyrighted to that individual and should be seen as completely 
independent of Admin Panel itself (Admin panel simply has the ability to 
launch the module).  For this reason, each module should have a header 
stating the author and license.

4/ All suggestions and help is welcomed and encouraged.

We hope Admin Panel evolves to be a useful tool.

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So that was the announcement, now for a short background.

I don't want to talk for Matteo or Angelo, so my comments are purely 
about me.
I have never written Perl code prior to Admin Panel, and only used Perl 
after advice from Mageia mail list and irc.
As such I am under no illusions about it's quality, if anyone would like 
to review my code (so far the code discussed has been Matteo's) I would 
love to receive tips and/or criticisms. I really just read some Perl 
basics and then put things together how I would logically think to do so 
with little to no referencing to other Perl code or idioms, I am sure 
there are better ways. Also I have not yet commented the code, or 
documented how to write a module, these are still on the todo list.

I really do want criticism, I wont be hurt, upset or defensive, but 
please keep in mind that I am not a Perl dev, do not use Perl for 
anything else, and if there is a more skilled person willing to do the 
coding I would be more than happy to hand over the reins. I am only 
doing this because it solves a problem I have been wanting fixed for a 
long time, I think it would be useful for many people and am willing to 
do it if no one else is.

We still need to do a fair bit on the core of Admin Panel, I would like 
to think we could get it pretty much done by years end (up till now I 
have only put in 10 minutes here and there every couple of weeks), after 
which we can start making/porting modules, and it would be great if 
anyone who likes what we are trying to achieve, helps with the effort 
(and you don't have to wait till the core is complete, you can start now 
if you like).

On the point of putting the license header in each file, it's not many 
files, so I don't see a problem, though name spacing is a good idea 
anyway. Each module will need to put in a header, so we would only be 
saving ourselves a couple of files, so probably not worth worrying about.

Anyway, I hope my contribution amounts to something eventually, and 
please feel free to join in.

Cheers
Tuxta