[OpenAFS] Status of the AFS::Command CPAN module

[Jeffrey Altman]

This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156)
--------------enigDEB2D0D41DF83541437EFB29
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Over the last year there has been discussion of adding -xml, -csv, and
other formatted text data streams.  Would that be easier for you to work
with?

Obviously all of the functionality that is being performed by the
various command line tools is in C.  libadmin is the library that is
used by the IBM AFS Server Manager on Windows.  Any functionality that
is missing could be filed as a feature request to
openafs-bugs@openafs.org so that it is tracked somewhere.

Jeffrey Altman


On 10/15/2010 1:34 PM, Phillip Moore wrote:
>=20
> If all the functionality of vos/pts/fs/bos were available in C
> libraries, that is precisely how I would like to implement this.  In
> fact, I've bitched and moaned about this endlessly over the years, and
> the fact is that in order to automate AFS administration, you still
> *MUST* use the CLI utilities for most tasks.  I would love to be proven=

> wrong.
>=20
> However, even if we went this route, that would be a complete and total=

> rewrite of this code from the ground up, and will be far from trivial. =
=20
> Let's agree to implement that in AFS::Command V3.  You have obviously
> never done any perl development with XS, either -- it's very, very
> non-trivial and something I would not wish upon my worst enemies.   I
> spent several years trying to perfect the MQSeries API, the core of
> which was XS wrappers around IBM C libraries, and that's how long it
> took to hunt down and kill off the last memory leak.
>=20
> For now, V2 is merely a modernization of the current implementation, an=
d
> it's taken me a total of 2 days to complete, although I have maybe
> another 2 or 3 days of improvements I want to complete.   I would
> estimate that an XS based wrapper around libadmin and friends is a few
> months of effort, at least.=20
>=20
> Tactically, AFS::Command will continue to screen scrape the CLI.
>=20
> Strategically, what you propose is precisely the direction I want to go=

> in, it's just going to take some time and energy, but then, I have
> plenty of both :-P
>=20
> On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Jeffrey Altman
> <jaltman@secure-endpoints.com <mailto:jaltman@secure-endpoints.com>> wr=
ote:
>=20
>     On 10/15/2010 1:01 PM, Phillip Moore wrote:
>=20
>     > Since AFS::Command is a glorified screen scraper, a few of the
>     > commands no longer accept lists of names/ids in order to make the=

>     error
>     > handling robust.
>=20
>     How about turning the implementation into something based on top of=

>     libadmin instead of executing command line tools?   One of the big
>     challenges preventing improvements to the command line tools is the=
 fear
>     that adding to, removing from or restructuring the command output i=
s
>     going to break tools that parse the output.
>=20
>     Jeffrey Altman
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20



--------------enigDEB2D0D41DF83541437EFB29
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32)

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMuJIiAAoJENxm1CNJffh42y4H/jCf01PVNMl6u6PH+Ic8fqx3
YYtZIpu0d7kVean+LtDyJVR4JmllIbiqgnkQX0wNv58AwtXPH0yzyYY9FPScMo3N
52AvL+6vc8hXHeJwdkFTEdI9RL0tJh+X1XNfwaLTT5Ik7QcYSCyu2QN/rwvO+EQI
G7Ja7sN/HgD7DMFe6AU9KkpJNAR3+yQLULL0r3XUFidtH+1YOFuZhdy3bBPQqWYW
L4foFkjSlzfrjLPmIdH9Q7j/c6ydXJNrMoeJYqSt7xzcHhQrEeoJdJwBA6G37ahE
uvYu57Tmsa/QeLxgRlIP4JVuMlslmLnBK5XDZO+C7UQtAVffDf/E/UqntUZkYpE=
=jfUz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--------------enigDEB2D0D41DF83541437EFB29--