[maemo-developers] Enriching the Application Manager scripting experience

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"ext Jari Tenhunen" <jari.tenhunen at iki.fi> writes:

> I've never really liked the syntax of these ini-style install files.
> Especially the artificially generated structure (with underscores, e.g.
> repo_deb_3) looks ugly to me. I know it's too late [...]

No no, it's not too late.

> [...] Of course you could have support for multiple repos by
> allowing magic group names (repository-*) or having something like
>
> [install]
> package = maemoxyzzy
> repositories = maemofoo maemobar
> ...
>
> [maemofoo]
> name = Foobar ...
>
> [maemobar]
> ...
>
> but that's a bit clumsy, although cleaner.

I like this idea a lot.

I do no longer my original approach of turning the .install files into
proper scripts is the way to go.  We need to limit their functionality
quite much anyway, and we are only going to support a number of well
defined scenarios.  Making it appear as if you could freely script the
AM would be misleading.  Making it so that the .install jusr provide
the parameter for pre-defined interactions scenarios should be all
that is needed, and easier to understand.  GKeyFiles should be
powerful enough for now.

(Also, having a castrated language language is a very unstable
situation: it's only a matter of time until you will eventually have
to implement a full language with control structures, variables,
recursion, etc.  But it is of course wrong to invent new languages, so
let's not move into that direction now.)


I will try to find a good way to extend the GKeyFiles and update the
documentation with it.

But again, please make sure that I know what features you want from
the .install files.  Don't worry too much whether it is easy to do or
not.