[Splashy-devel] lsb functions can't be the best solution

[Otavio Salvador]

Vincenzo Ampolo <vincenzo.ampolo at gmail.com> writes:

> As said in #splashy there are some problems with this idea:
> 1) is it legal to write an /etc/lsb-base-logging.sh?

It's.

> 2) is this "way" flexible?

It's nevertheless we need to conflict will other packages providing it
too or extend it later to be pluggable.

> let me answer to these questions:
>
> 1) In the debian policy manual at
> http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#s7.5.1
> there is written that "Firstly, as mentioned before, it is usually an
> error for a package to contain files which are on the system in another
> package."
> To be sure i asked to the #ubuntu-motu channel:
> <Goshawk> hi, this is a package creation question about the ubuntu
> policy: is it legal that a package replaces or changes a configuration
> file of another package?
> <crimsun> Ubuntu follows Debian policy, meaning that's illegal.
> <crimsun> what you _can_ do is invoke a conffile manager provided by
> that other package
> I don't know if the lsb-base (usually it
> provides /etc/lsb-base-logging.sh) has a conffile manager and IMHO it's
> not good to change a file of that package, because the version provided
> by splashy can break other services.

It's not illegal. If you look carefully the lsb-base package you'll
notice it:

,----
| otavio at neumann:~$ dpkg -L lsb-base
| /.
| /lib
| /lib/lsb
| /lib/lsb/init-functions
| /etc
| /etc/lsb-base
| /usr
| /usr/share
| /usr/share/doc
| /usr/share/doc/lsb-base
| /usr/share/doc/lsb-base/copyright
| /usr/share/doc/lsb-base/README.Debian.gz
| /usr/share/doc/lsb-base/changelog.Debian.gz
`----

As you can see:

,----[ last line of /lib/lsb/init-functions ]
| [ -e /etc/lsb-base-logging.sh ] && . /etc/lsb-base-logging.sh || true
`----

It does this to _allow_ external tools to override and extend it.

So it's not illegal since lsb-base doesn't have an
/etc/lsb-base-logging.sh file included.

> The idea showed by Otavio is better for me:
> Create a new executable that talks with splashyServer, called
> SplashyClient, that substitutes splashy_pgrep, splashy_update and all
> these "little" programs.
> In this way a simple init script will load splashyServer and
> splashyClient, then SplashyClient can talk with splashyServer (but also
> any other application can talk with splashyServer with unix sockets)
> This way is more flexible for me. it will be more easy to implement
> animations and it will be possible to control better what init is doing.

I don't see how it can be more flexible and why does one way exclude
another. Using lsb-base way we can have a server and client that
manager it besides that it'll be fair simple to work that way and good
IMHO.

What, in my POV, lsb-base is good is to avoid a lot of math involved
to "discover" what's happening.

-- 
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