Re: Translation of init scripts
Bart Schuller wrote:
> We would like to make a graphical bootup, a bit like the Macintosh does
> where every subsystem displays an icon. Or perhaps like RedHat which I
> think now displays a colored [ OK ] for every daemon started.
>
> The point is to change the scripts in such a way that either their
> output could be parsed (which should be possible now if they all were
> policy compliant) or their output is generated by commands that can be
> replaced by something more fancy.
This ties in with my reaction. Look at the init scripts today. We have this
start-stop-daemon program, which can output things when it does its work.
It's basically an abstaction layer. We consitently use it. And yet we tell
it not to output anything, and each and every init script hand-rolls its
own output.
Does this strike anyone else as a truely bad design?
I propose:
- Make start-stop-daemon comply with the policy of what an init script should
output. This may require that its interface be modified some. For example,
we will have to pass a description of the daemon being started in to it.
- Internationalize start-stop-daemon. So the "Starting", "Stopping", etc
messages get translated.
- Internationalize each init script so the text that is passed into
start-stop-daemon ("foo bar server", "time waster", "portmap daemon", etc)
can be translated. Use Lalo's proposal to do this.
- Allow start-stop-daemon to be replaced with other utilities if people want
to, that output different types of things. Or just modify it to be able to
generate some of these types of output. If debian as a whole decided we
wanted redhat style colored messages, once we got this far adding them
would just require modifying start-stop-daemon, not every init script.
--
see shy jo
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