[Mageia-dev] announcing magpie

Wed Feb 2 18:00:05 CET 2011

On 11/02/02 16:33 +0100, nicolas vigier wrote:
+> > Hm, for such seemingly trivial feature additions, wouldn't it make more sense
+> > to just implement it in repsys..?
+> 
+> Jerome makes his scripts in perl. And mgarepo is in python. So it makes
+> sense to distribute it separatly. And some of the features can still be
+> implemented later in mgarepo if it appears they are useful to a lot of
+> people ...
+
+more importantly, those trivial features are designed to be coupled
+later on. and this will be much easier to do if every action is
+available in a module of its own...
+
+eg, here are some other scripts that i have, intend to clean & port to
+magpie subcommands:
+
+ - update a perl module to latest version without having to specify said
+   version. i already have sthg that works (for more than 2 years),
+   which means that to update a pkg in mandriva i used to do:
+        $ cooker perl-Foo-Bar && refresh
+   ("cooker" command was the equivalent of "magpie co")
+
+ - list all perl modules needing to be updated, grouped by core,
+   dual-lifed or regular modules. i used to do the following to know
+   which modules to update:
+        $ cpan-old
+
+ - order a group of packages to be rebuilt according to their build
+   requires. this allowed me to rebuild ~2400 perl packages for mageia
+   quite easily.
+
+now, the grand plan for magpie is to integrate all those commands & then
+to create a new subcommand that would automatically:
+    - run cpan-old (magpie xxx to be created)
+    - sort them according to their buildrequires (magpie xxx to be
+      created)
+    - for each of them, check it out (magpie co)
+    - get latest version, update, build & submit (magpie xxx to be
+      created)
+    - wait a bit if needed (magpie bswait)
+    - go back to step 2
+
+now, you do understand that even if perl allows me to seemlessly call
+various scripts written in whatever language (bash, python, etc), having
+all subcommands sanitized and available as module will make all the
+plumbing much more efficient, clean & maintainable.
+
+oh - another thing. had i decided not to clean my collection of scripts
+and publish them as a perl module, those scripts would still sit on my
+computer and would not be shared. and i definitely think that it's a
+good thing to share: it will allow people to help maintain perl packages
+(and thus reducing my workload), not counting the fact that it may be
+useful for other distributions too (*cough* mandriva *cough*).
+
+hoping to clarify the rationale of magpie,
+jérôme 
+-- 
+jquelin at gmail.com
+