GSoC 2011:Tool for merging configuration files

Hello,

My name is Christos, I have the opportunity to work on a very interesting project for openSUSE, as a part of Google Summer of Code 2011. My project concern a tool for merging configurations files and specifically sysconfig files. You can find more information about the initial project idea by following my last blog post About GSoC proposal “fillup-ng”, there are a little more information about me there too.

Since last week, there has been some exciting news about the project i am working on. In a blog post of my mentor Michal, we got a suggestion about Augeas, an API capable of parsing, editing a configuration file and representing it in a tree data structure. Currently however, Augeas doesn’t support merging of configurations files. A feature that consists the basic and most important idea of our project.

So, instead of writing a new tool from the scratch, we thought that it would better to extend Augeas with the feature we are interested in, that of merging configuration/sysconfig files, and then proceed with the necessary actions of integrating it to openSUSE. I believe that this change in the initial idea offers more benefits. First of all, by using this approach we can concentrate even more in the actual process of merging effectively the files. We will also support an existing open source library/tool. There will be live upstream with many other people contributing by sending patches, fixing bugs and the most important contributing with new ideas and suggestions. It is in my belief that in this way when the project will be completed, we will have the same and even better result. I have already contact the developers of Augeas about this possibility and our intention to use Augeas in our project. And i have to say that they are very helpful

There is a lot of work to be done…

Regards,
Christos Bountalis

About GSoC proposal “fillup-ng”

Hello to everyone,

Recently I have found out that my GSoC proposal was accepted. Therefore, I thought that it would be nice to introduce myself and the project I will work on, to the community.

A few words about me

My name is Christos “mpounta” Bountalis and I am slightly over 24, I live in Salamis a small island near Athens in Greece. I am currently in my final year studying towards a BSc degree in Computer Science. I spend my free time programming, listening to music, tweaking my system, hanging out with friends and occasionally playing soccer. I consider GSoC to be a great opportunity for me to join the openSUSE developers community in a more introductory way. and I plan to take advantage of it .

Fillup-ng

I originally found the “Fillup-ng” idea in the GSoC ideas page of openSUSE. The initial idea was by Michal Hrušecký, I have to take this opportunity to public thank him for being very helpful by answering all of my questions during the initial preparation of my proposal.

What is this project? Fillup-ng aims to be a replacement for the current utility fillup. Fillup is a utility for parsing and merging sysconfig files which contain different variables concerning the actual configuration or the environment. Every now and then, a new version of the configuration comes to the system for example with a fresh installed package. This rises some questions about what happens with the procedure of merging these variables, sometimes there may be variables that exist only in the new file, sometime there may be variables in the old, sometimes they are common variables in both files, in all these cases you must decide which variables and which version(if there are two) you want to choose in the final file. Fillup makes the procedure of resolving all these issues easier by offering more “intelligent/automated” ways of dealing with these cases.

What will fillup-ng offer? Fillup-ng will be a program offering same functionality with fillup but with many new advantages/features. First of all fillup-ng will be implemented following a modular architecture supporting plug-ins that will make the program a lot easier to be maintained and improved. Next through the plug-in systems, fillup-ng aims to provide support to more types of configuration files like (.ini and possible .xml) that will make the application useful to even more developers/users.

During the GSoC proposals reviews I got a suggestion to change the name of the new application to something different than fillup-ng. Therefore I thought to create a small poll with some sample names, and I would like your opinion. You can vote even suggest a new name using the following poll

. The poll will remain open for one week. Thank you!

P.S. I will use this blog to post more information and news about the application.