[unct-devel] Thoughts

[Bill R. <bi...@se...>]

Hey Kris & UnCt people,

OK, Here's some notes I wrote up on Kris's ideas, the freshmeat article,
and some of my own ideas.  Nothing too cohesive, just some things I'm
throwing out there to stir up some thoughts.

+mod_api:
    We will need something like this for all of the modules.  Its basic purpose
    will be this:
        Programatically, we will be getting a char* over a socket from the
        client, and with this information we will need to kick off a process
        on the server.  When we "register" a module, and a function in a
        module, it will take a function that say, adds a user, and give it a
        name like "add_user".  The char* from the client will adhere to some
        standard we set, and contain the name of the function to kick off
        ("add_user").  Then we know what function to start.  The char* will
        also contain the information to provide as an argument to the function.

+file formats:
    I agree with Oliver that we should keep all *new* configuration files in
    XML.  That way it's all in one format, and XML really isn't very hard
    to grasp.  We don't want everyone who writes a module to be using their own,
    different format.  Obviously, we would leave any existing configuration
    files alone.  BTW Oliver, we've been using libxml2, and it is a very nice
    API.

+revision control:
    Someone bought this up in response to the freshmeat article.  This sounds
    like a good idea.  Every time a configuration file is changed, a copy of
    its last state is kept with some sort of revision control.  This could also
    be applied to system wide configuration files that are changed as a result
    of UnCt's actions.

+cron:
    We probably want to keep this.  This would be useful for admins.  You could
    set x,y, and z commands to be kicked off whenever you want.  This is more
    of a system administration tool than a configuration tool, but very handy,
    and already implemented, so I say we keep it in.

Bill