[Gnu-arch-users] Some plans about arch infrastructure in Perl

[Mikhael Goikhman]

Hi, Arch fans.

This is my first message to the list although some may already know me
from the Wiki and personal conversations. I didn't want to participate
in the arch discussions earlier, although it was very tempting; this
would disallow me to prepare my talks for our local Perl Conference. :)
Now, it is behind.

During the last 2 months I thought about a project of implementing an arch
infrastructure in Perl, consisting of several subprojects, for example:

  * complete automatical mirroring system with command line interface
  * accurate archive registry system with arch backend and web interface
  * web-based revision browser (already partially implemented)
  * command line wrapper for tla with advanced subcommands
  * full featured GUI frontend to arch
  * common Perl library to avoid code duplication (already started)
  * bindings for Perl when libarch is ready
  * any other client or server solutions that developers of this project
    may find useful

I may hear arguments that some of the components are available already.
My answer is that we should have a Perl framework anyway (at least the
class library), and I believe in the healthy competition and cooperation.
The more good tools we have the better for arch.

If you are an experienced Perl hacker, please feel free to participate.
I definitelly don't have enough time to do everything. Accourding to
the mail archive, Andrew Suffield is a potential copartner. Others?

Why Perl? I think it is an ideal language for any kind of applications:

  * it is powerful, flexible, mature and blah-blah
  * it is portable, the same code may run on all (even rare) systems
  * it is already installed on every developer system (because, for
    example, autoconf and automake use it)

I hope most of the subprojects will not use any external modules and work
with older Perl versions too, it should be "download and run anywhere".
Except for the GUI that may use Gtk2-Perl or a similar external package.
Actually, since I am more a command line person, I would like someone
else to lead the GUI in Perl subproject, but I may certainly contribute to
it or even implement some individual parts.

The perl library may be released to CPAN when it is ready, like it is
done with other revision systems. But CPAN is not a priority for me.

I will write about individual subprojects separately.

I am willing to use the following names. Please tell me whether you see
any problems with them or may suggest something better:

  * archzoom - web-based revision browser
  * archangel - GUI
  * axp - command line tool and wrapper for tla (Arch eXtended by Perl)
  * arch-magic - the whole infrastructure name (just to name it somehow)

I didn't go deeper into the details, because this is my hello message,
not the design message. Finally, I am in no way an arch guru yet, so
expect me to say stupid things sometimes, but this is solvable. :-)

Regards,
Mikhael.