Configuration infrastructure (system configs replacement, maintainers please read)

[Jaroslav Reznik]

Hi!
We've been working for some time on improving current system configuration 
tools (system-config-* cleanup), some of these tools are going to be removed 
completely as there's no need for them now (autoconfiguration, obsoleted), some 
are really very outdated and unmaintained for some time. And of course - we 
have PolicyKit 1 now. 
What does this mean? Now we have nice opportunity to split user interface from 
actual backendn (and usually has to be runned under root account). And it 
would be nice to have some common interface sitting on DBus - it's where we 
aim with fmci - Fedora Management and Configuration Infrastructure 
(infrastructure as we already have a lot of services on DBus - so we'd like 
also to document these. It's more than just some interface).

So the plan: first we want to collect input from user/devs - we don't want to 
do project for project because we like projects but useful one... We don't 
want to replace or change the current way - configuration files. Just high level 
access, not covering all functionality, to core system to be used by new GUIs, 
scripts etc. Next is to document the current state - for examples for network 
configuration there's NetworkManager, desktop team is working on user 
management tool and there are more projects, usually not connected etc. This 
is what has to be done first.

Summary:
* high level interface?
* documentation of existing interfaces on one place
* UI/backend splits (current s-c-* tools maintainers input needed)
* coding the most important interfaces for F-14

So if you are interested in this project - suggestions, ideas, you'd like to 
participate in other ways (coding, etc...) - you're welcome on fmci-devel 
list! Reply here, ping me, kill me - (nearly) everything allowed! This 
projects needs interaction from more teams - base os, destkop, design etc...

Thanks
Jaroslav
-- 
Jaroslav Řezník <jreznik(a)redhat.com&gt;
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

Office: [phone]
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