Re: Questions from the start..

[Will P. <pa...@dc...>]

> I'm just starting to play with Ark in order to see if it addresses
> some problems I've got.

Hi, Michael; happy to see what we can do...

> When following the "try-ark" doc, I came up with these questions:
> 1) Does the test-dir area have to not be /tmp?

You should be able to put it anywhere.  /tmp is sometimes slightly
magical (esp across reboots :-).

> 2) Does the ark-src-dir have to be a hard path and not an
>     environmental variable (as in ark_profile)?

A path, yes. I'd recommend an absolute path.

> 3) Is "solo-host" the "controller"

I'm not sure what you mean by "the controller".  The idea of the try-ark
experiment is that you use ARK on a single machine to build a few
packages in a non-special directory (e.g. under your home directory).

Once the experiment is over, you can throw it away.  Then you will write
an ARK description that fits your site and what you are trying to do.
ARK isn't a product that you download and it magically does fixed tasks
for you; rather, it is a "language" with which you can describe the
sysadmin tasks/situations at your site that you care about.  (Happily,
you can build upon what others have described -- the "sidai" team is
nothing but a big pile of descriptions that you can build upon.  That's
what the try-ark experiment does.)

> It seems like the activity in this product has dwindled.

Which may be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view :-)

The core ARK engine (which processes the "language" mentioned above)
hasn't changed much in five years or so.  I personally consider this a
Very Good Thing.

I use the ARK stuff every day and plan to keep doing so; I don't know
about anyone else.  I usually release a full set of my bits about once a
year and, yes, I'm running a little behind schedule this year :-(

> Does anyone have an alternative to this one?

Depending on what you are trying to do, the answer is likely to be 'yes'.

Will