Re: [Devel] wls development and future

[Finn-Arne Johansen <faj@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 11:45:00AM +0200, Ragnar Wisløff wrote:
> Andreas Schuldei wrote:
> [snip]
> >Long term goal: 
> >Have an excellent Admin interface, get the webmin ldap user
> >module merged upstream, so we dont have to care about it any
> >longer. 
> >
> >THe whole of webmin is perl-coding wise in a sorry state: no code
> >reuse, no modularity, hardly any indention, global variables,
> >awkward, antient use of perl syntax (perl1, as someone
> >suggested), functions dont return their results, they just print
> >them to stdout. This is the case in the whole sourcetree. If
> >we tried to submitt code useing CGI::Application and
> >HTML::Template, this will most likely not be accepted. Our code
> >would not fit in.
> 
> Until something better than Webmin comes along, we are going with 
> Webmin. Unfortunately the coding style is not the best, but we will just 
> have to live with it. However, whether or not the user/group admin 
> management is part of Webmin is another question.
> 
> >I propose to do the following:
> >Since wls1 works, we could ship that if we wanted to.
> 
> Combined with a, if necessary command line, tool to generate batch 
> creation of users, this should be acceptable as a version 1 solution. 
> Naturally the use of a command line tool needs to be documented. This 
> batch tool is vital, start of term is coming up and it will be needed 
> very soon.

There is now a fileimport that mostly works. I have to do some cleaning
on passwords, and also if you selects a common group on which to add
all users that are imported, the users are not added into this group.
(minor left-out from my side)  

But I also want to split the code out, and make it work as a
command-line tool, more in line with adduser, moduser, addgroup and so
on like the tools from the adduser-package. 

The reason for separating fileimport from the regular adduser was to
make it easier for the developer (me) to separate. now that the work is
almost done, I'll soon be looking at the GUI in wls2 again. I have a
good understanding of the code in wls1 now (I think), and yes, I have
found a lot of code with errors, but are not to concerned about it. 
Some who have started to fix the code in wls1 even put in new code with
errors, or removed some working code, but we'll manage. Could we please
have some time to do the coding, instead of arguing on how to do this. 

Yes, I want to split the code in 3 layers - db , functions and gui. 
Yes, Most of the gui in wls2 is a lot better than the gui in wls1.
Yes, we need to have this thing working before Skolelinux versjon 1

Can we now code ? 
Most of the time on the skolelinux-gathering at debcamp I had to listen
to arguments like We want this, or we must have that, or lets do it
like this. 

> >if we manage to get wls2 into shape (after restructuring it with
> >CGI::Application and HTML::Template) in time, we ship that. 
> Didn't you mention above that it wouldn't work in the Webmin framework. 
> Maybe I misunderstood.

Lets skip wls2. Either we fix wls1, or you rewrite from scratch. 

-- 
Finn-Arne Johansen 
faj@xxxxxx
http://bzz.no/?page=finnarne
Registered Linux user #86307 (http://counter.li.org)