[Rock-dev] [Orocos-Dev] Proposal for an update to the autoproj configuration structure

[Leif Christensen]

Hi folks,

the new user says:

Am 24.09.2012 09:47, schrieb Sylvain Joyeux:
> On 09/22/2012 01:34 PM, Alexander Duda wrote:
>> autoproj/remotes:
>> The remote package sets should not be touched by normal users therefore
>> I would not show them in the autoproj folder.
> That would IMO make it even more confusing as part of the configuration 
> would be hidden
Ok, I was talking about too much advanced stuff in the folders, that can
confuse new users using basic setups. But on the other side, one of the
major issues I often have with autoproj/rock is, that I don't know what
automatic magic is going on. Therefore, I would also not try to hide
things, but try to avoid such stuff in the first place, and if that is
not possible, make it perfectly clear, that this is stuff, one doesn't
have to touch in most cases.

>> Another reason against
>> them is that if you are changing into the remotes folder you are also
>> silently changing the current repository.
> Not exactly right: you are changing the current repository when you are 
> changing into a specific remote, because they are currently symlinks. 
> Which is something I am trying to fix with the proposed changes.
>> A possible solution would be for me to change remotes into .remotes to
>> have a convenient way to access them for the maintainer of the remote
>> package sets but to hide them for new uses who can get easily confused.
> The point of the change is to not hide the remotes, but make the remotes 
> more straightforward to understand: they are listed in the main 
> configuration and look like the main configuration (no fundamental 
> difference anymore). The name is straightforward (it is listed in the 
> config file). I am a bit against hiding them as I found, along the way, 
> that hiding big parts of your configuration leads to even more confusion.
Yep.

>> File structure:
>> Why do you stick to the YAML format? The error handling is just a pain
>> in the ass especially after they changed from syck to psych. For me YAML
>> is fine for everything which is generated by autoproj like the proposed
>> options.yml but I would rather go for a nice DSL than plain YAML
>> configuration files as in both cases I have to look up the keywords
>> anyway but the first one gives you the ability to generate nice error
>> messages. Furthermore you could put everything into the proposed
>> config.rb. But I guess this is just a matter of taste.
> The rationale was that new users only have to edit YAML files, which 
> some people find easier than Ruby code (especially since YAML is also 
> the config-file-format-of-choice for ROS tools). However, I find your 
> proposition interesting in general ... I'd like to have some more 
> feedback from "new users" (we need to ping Leif :P)
> 
I'm not very fond of yaml. If possible, I would go for simple Key/Value
pairs. But I guess that some sort of hierarchy/grouping ist needed?

Concerning proposal 1, I like the reduced / flattened layout (but that
you already knew ;-).
If I understand it correctly, we won't have package-specific config
layouts, at least not in the same file structures? I liked the idea of
basically working in your 'own' stack exclusively and have one basic
rock layout for all different projects you are working on. I often see
people having multiple rock installations for every project they are
working on with all the basic stuff included again, perhaps because
there are too many interdependencies between basic config layout and
their 'stack'?

Concerning proposal 2, I don't get the point of merging all information
from one config files in another one. That seems confusing and
information duplicating?

Greetings,
Leif



-- 
 Leif Christensen

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