In article <6b2d1e190511082338s105b3631n9d8424ef726e38f3@mail.gmail.com> Julio wrote:
: I once heard of an idea that seemed very nice to me.  Make the install
: scripts declarative rather than letting them execute any code (as some of
: you have said).  E.g., they'd only specify "I need this user" and the tool
: could do whatever is needed to accomplish it.

: Of course, this can't be complete because packages may need to do
: extra things not planned beforehand by the install tools.  In this case,
: we'd let them execute random commands from the INSTALL scripts, but
: the admin could be warned before that (as happens now with the @exec
: lines).  This could be viable because the amount of commands to be run
: as root could be kept low.

: How to do this?  Maybe we could have a predefined directory within
: LOCALBASE containing a set of scripts (one for each action that we want
: to issue).  For example, one could be 'user.sh', and receive a set of
: arguments to do (de)configuration of users.  Packages could simply be
: allowed to call scripts within that directory (doing things in a very simple
: form, such as 'user [action] [parameters]').

  This is more or less what Thomas and I had in mind.

: I'd like to see something like this because it could allow some packages
: to extend the default actions.  GConf2 comes to mind, as it could install
: a common script to register and unregister schemas.  (Several other
: packages could benefit from this.)

  This sounds useful, but allows packages to execute arbitrary code
again (although you now need two packages to do it: one to install the
script, the other to run it).  We should warn the admin when such
scripts are installed.

						yours,
						dillo