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