[augeas-devel] Re: New example at creating a lens

[Dominique Dumont]

Free Ekanayaka <free at 64studio.com> writes:

> |--==> On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:55:53 +0200, Dominique Dumont <domi.dumont at free.fr> said:
>
>   > Hello
>   > As part of my mentor activity for GSoC 2009, I had to create a lens for Debian 
>   > control files.
>
> Great!
>
> Out of curiosity, is the control lens targeted to some specific use
> case you're facing? Or is it just something you think it will possibly
> be useful in the future?

Jawnsy's Google Summer of Code project [1] has 2 main topics:
- provide Perl/Qt4 bindings
- provide a library to parse and write Debian control and copyright
  files (the ones that are used to create debian packages)

Since the library is to be used by several languages, jawnsy started the
implementation in C. At first sight, the debctrl syntax looks fairly
straightforward. On second sight, it's more complex.

So Jawnsy faced some trouble with his C implementation. As Jawnsy mentor
for GSoC, I suggested to use Augeas instead of pure C. Unfortunately, he
couln't figure out by himself how to use Augeas to parse control
files. So I had the create the lens and write enough explanation for him
to understand. 

I still do not know if he will use Augeas or not for his project (that's
his decision, I don't want to pull rank there). But I least, I've shown
him that it's possible.

All the best

[1] http://wiki.debian.org/JonathanYu/Debian_Control_Files_Parsing_and_Editing_Library

-- 
Dominique Dumont 
"Delivering successful solutions requires giving people what they
need, not what they want." Kurt Bittner

irc:
  domidumont at irc.freenode.net
  ddumont at irc.debian.org