Ruby parser for kickstart files

[Michael DeHaan]

On 08/21/2009 10:56 AM, Chris Lumens wrote:
>> I am looking to build a Ruby on Rails application for creating Fedora
>> spins/remixes.
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Remixes_Web_Interface
>>      
>
> I'm curious why you'd want to do this when most all the rest of the
> Fedora web infrastructure involves python.
>    

There's /nothing/ wrong with using another web development platform if 
you like it better.

Fedora should not have any language preferences.

Despite being a Python fan, having been on the wrong side of language 
wars before, I won't support them, and they are wrong for lots of reasons.

However you make one very good point below:

>    
>> The problem is that I cannot find a suitable Ruby parser for kickstart
>> files and writing one from scratch is what I'm trying to avoid.
>>
>> Could someone please point me to the correct direction here.
>> Plan B is to switch to Django, which would enable me to use pykickstart.
>>      
>
> pykickstart is the canonical kickstart file parser, being used by at
> least a half dozen projects here.  If you have to use another one or
> write your own, you're going to have to play catch up when I need to
> make changes to it.
>    

That point is Anaconda is itself using pykickstart.

Fortunately though, there's absolutely no reason something building 
kickstarts /needs/ pykickstart.

It's just as simple to build a system that /templates out/ kickstarts 
from any arbitrary templating framework.

(Cobbler already does this, using Cheetah, though you could pick erb).

In the case of pykickstart, this is nice, because pykickstart running on 
EL 4 can't create a Fedora 11 compatible kickstart anyway.... it doesn't 
know about the new tags.

With a templating system, you could run your kickstart generator on any 
platform, and it wouldn't matter what version of pykickstart you had.

Of course, if you want to /parse/ kickstarts and not just generate them 
you need pykickstart, no doubt.

Yet, if you are just building a tool that generates kickstarts -- which 
is what the input to livecd-creator and such really is -- and it's not 
complicated -- I really don't see any need for a parser there.

The parser would be useful if you wanted someone to upload their own 
kickstart and then make programmatic changes to it -- but, if you're 
making a live CD or whatever, I'm not sure that's required or even all 
that useful.

--Michael



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