[Pipet Devel] While you're in CVS...

[Brad Chapman]

Dearest Locians;
	I have done some actual coding (woo-hoo!) on some of the
filesystem/container stuff we were talking about and just committed it to
cvs in a brand new directory: loci-file. I decided to stay out of loci-core
for now because:

1. I didn't want to screw stuff up.
2. I'm trying to learn how to do GUIs with pyGTK/pyGNOME from the ground
up, so that I can get a good grasp on how it all works.
3. I didn't want to screw stuff up.

So anyways, if you decide you would like to look at the mess in loci-file,
you will find:

filegui.py: The (ugly) GUI interface
file2XML.py: A program that converts a directory structure into an XMLish
document
other random stuff: TODO, CHANGES...

Since it is rough, this is the step by step on how to work it:

1. It requires all the same stuff as Loci: pyGNOME/pyGTK, python,
gnome-libs (well, maybe it doesn't need all this--who knows!)
2. Just move into the loci-files directory and type './filegui.py &'
3. You'll be presented with window containing one nasty little button
labelled "container" that fills the entire window. This is my temporary
substitute for a container.
4. Click on the button and you'll be presented with a file dialog. Pick a
directory.
5. Click okay, and the program will write out a file 'XMLoutput.xml'
containing the directory substructure modelled as an XML-type document.
6. Click on File and Exit in the main window, since that's all it does.
7. Check out XMLoutput.xml and see if it accurately represents the filesystem.

The XML file has indentations and everything so it isn't too bad to look at
and check. I've just tested it on a few directories and it seems to do
okay.
	So if you are interested, please check it out, try it out on your
favorite directories and be sure it is modeling them okay, take a look at
the code and send suggestions/mocking comments, and generally have a nifty
time with it. Please let me know if I messed up the cvs commit or if
anything else is horrible wrong and I'll try to fix it.
	I'm off school and without formal responsibilities, so I'll be
doing more coding on it in the next couple days (while I am near my
computer) and it should *hopefully* improve and do more.

	WRT all of the discussion on the list--these are my quick thoughts
on the loci as Apache type filesystem stuff:

1. As much as I hate config files, we probably need a loci.conf file to
specify things like $LOCI_ROOT and private and public directories. I think
instead of having specific defined directories for public and private, we
should just take the Apache-type approach and specifically specify private
directories within the $LOCI_ROOT file system. Although I could really care
less where Loci is on my file system, people, in general, like to have
control over the location of their programs and will probably want to
specify it.
2. How are we going to deal with security issues surrounding programs? Will
all programs running under Loci need to be located within the $LOCI_ROOT
filesystem? If so, will they all need to be in a specific directory
($LOCI_ROOT/bin?) like cgi-scripts in apache? I really know nothing about
security so I'm just throwing out an idea.

I still need to digest most of the conversation before I can make half-way
rational comments on it.

Oh, and Jeff--with the new snapshot I lost the nice scrollbars that I had
previously. So now I can move loci off the desktop and they just end up
disappearing instead of the desktop scrolling. I like the new direction it
is going though, and will be excited to see some loci inside loci!

Brad