[Nms-cgi-devel] future directions

[Nick C. <ni...@cl...>]

There have been lots of suggestions for things we might add to this
project.  Here's the outline of a release scheme that might fit most
of them in somewhere.

We pull out common functionality between scripts into modules where it
makes sense, and the 'master' versions of the scripts that we have in
CVS use those modules in the normal Perl 'use The::Module;' way.

When each script is released, 3 different packages will be generated for
it, and the end user can choose which they want:

1)  The traditional perl way, with the script using the modules, the
    modules bundled into the packages with instructions for the end user
    to install both modules and scripts on the web server.

    TFmail currently works like this.

2)  The modules inlined into the body of the script, so that as far as
    the end user can see they're just editing and uploading a single
    large stand alone CGI script.
  
    wwwboard.pl currently looks like this.

3)  Scripts(s) and modules(s) are incorporated into a self extracting
    and configuring autoinstall CGI, which the end user just uploads
    and runs.

    tfmail_ai (sourceforge download page only) currently works like
    this.


This will mean a more complex release process, with quite a lot of Perl
generating the scripts from the sources in CVS.

--
Nick