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

[Steve Simmons]

On Oct 15, 2010, at 1:40 PM, Jeffrey Altman wrote:

> 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?
>=20
> 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.

Speaking as one of the guys who occasionally works on the xml/csv stuff =
- yes, this sort of usage is exactly why I'd like to see xml/csv/etc. =
But it's not there yet. Funky parsing of output from command line tools =
works now. AFS::Command works now. When the better CLIs and output =
formats are there, I'll look at updating our many tools to use them. =
Until then, I'll happily ease my work day on the strength of Phillips =
efforts.

If we were going to spend time modifying AFS for eased manageability, =
I'm much more interested in the things that can't be obtained by =
layering some fancy perl on top of the command-line tools. The whole =
xattrs/osx-cruft discussion is a fine example, as are some of the =
capabilities that Russ Allbery has layered onto AFS with his secondary =
database.

One might argue that implementing/updating AFS::Command is time better =
spent on other things, but that misses some important points. Any =
command-scraped result is useful on the day the code is done, without =
requiring a reinstall of AFS. It's also significantly easier to do, =
given the complexity of understanding the internals of AFS. There is =
also a much large community qualified to do it - these days there are a =
boatload more perl programmers than there are C programmers familiar =
with the internals of AFS.

Steve=