[Dwai-developers] Breaking news

[Lucio C. <lu...@su...>]

Hi there,

I'm here just to let you know the latest news.
First of all, we have a working dewmaster script. Do you remeber what the 
dewmaster script should be? A script that lets you build the DF file (dwai 
XML) from a deb package and a bunch of additional informations.

Exciting? You haven't heard anything yet!

Just to say a few words about it:
* it needs only bash, dpkg, and a few very common utilities (grep, sed, wc, 
head, tail, and so on)
* it can work interactively or in batch mode
* it's configurable system wide and individually for each system user
* it comes with a README which contains many useful words, please read them...
* it was written during my holidays in Spain, where I was lacking internet 
access, so it's on my notebook for now, but I'm going to release it tomorrow. 
You'll find the download on the sourceforge project page.
* IT ROCKS!

Exciting? You haven't heard anything yet!

We also have a working dwai client. Yes, you have understood, exactly that 
little program that installs a debian package found on the web, given that 
the web page has a DF file for it.

A few words on the dwai client:
* it needs only bash and a few common utilities, just like the dewmaster 
script (and yes, it parses XML using only bash...)
* It works like a wizard with dialog boxes. The dialog boxes are powered by 
whiptail, which gives the dwai client the same look and feel as the debian 
installer (is this a good thing?...)
* It was written during my holidays, you'll find the download tomorrow
* IT WORKS LIKE A CHARM! (though it's not very fast, because the bash XML 
library I've written it's not optimized at all, and it has a few limitations, 
but the warnings for the final user are already in place)

These news basically mean that:

* we have a nearly complete dwai solution
* we need mime type integration (see package shared-mime-info)
* it would be wonderful to have a debian package of the dwai client included 
in the upcoming stable release of Etch. Do you think we are on time? Is Etch 
already frozen?

Are these news exciting? They are for me, I hope also for you!

Lucio.