Why Elektra is the wrong approach (Was Re: The Strengths and Weakness of Fedora/RHEL OS management)

[David Zeuthen]

On Tue, 2006-04-04 at 13:31 -0400, Bill Rugolsky Jr. wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 12:25:12PM -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > Uhm, no one is forcing you to use NetworkManager just yet so there is
> > not really any regression. Btw, the price we pay to support two
> > networking configuration stacks is higher than you think.
> 
> By two networking configuration stacks you mean the traditional method
> and the NetworkManager way?  

Correct.

> Wouldn't it have been better to have
> an actual design ... rather than thinking up a GUI interface to some
> use case, then starting coding?

There is always a fine line and one benefit of getting NM in the
distribution early is that it helped moved the kernel networking stack
forward insofar that many bugs got fixed. You know (or maybe you don't),
the bad rep NetworkManager had for a while is partly due to really
really broken drivers.

That and the fact that NetworkManager is pretty useful to a lot of
people who happens to have hardware supported by NM.

> Pete's condescension is right on target: core Linux components are
> being replaced by people who, by their own admission, "hate Unix."

Hating UNIX and actually working on providing software that solves real
problems without the user having to be computer literate are two
completely different things. Yes, I admit to both, but obviously one
doesn't imply the other.

The condescension from Pete is not OK in my book because NetworkManager
is still not default. For reasons partly related to kernel drivers,
partly related to the fact we need a bit more infrastructure to do this
right.

> It seems that an "unusual requirement" is one that is difficult and
> inconvenient for that other operating system, i.e., a requirement
> that foregoes the monkey pressing buttons in front of a
> bitmapped display.

That's not really a nice thing to say. And NetworkManager is still not
default.

> Unix/Linux carries years of baggage, mis-designed features, and half-baked
> implementations.  But today's GNOME hackers seem to have completely
> missed the value of (1) text, (2) tools, and (3) domain-specific little
> languages and protocols.  One area where Unix went somewhat astray is
> that script and config syntax differences created unnecessary impedance [the
> original point of this thread] -- the Lisp machine folks had that much
> right.  Two decades later, it's easy to see that domain-specific languages
> are best built without inventing lots of arcane syntax; these days S-exprs
> have been replaced by XML, XSLT (*vomit*), and worse.  Unfortunately,
> simply stuffing name/value config pairs in a file is not the same as
> domain-specific design.
> 
> I'm not holding my breath waiting for support for 20-year-old
> "unusual requirements" to be bolted on later.

NetworkManager is still not the default. I don't think it will be
default before it does a lot more what the current default networking
stack does including working when no user is logged in.

My view is that Pete is blowing this out of proportion and I think
you're just being his puppet in this particular case.

    David