Re: ver_linux script updates

From: David Ford (david+cert@blue-labs.org)
Date: Wed Feb 13 2002 - 20:35:08 EST


> o your script assumes bash as /bin/sh. Is this ok with everyone? Is
> there noone running a Bourne shell only? printf and declare are not
> in the standard Boune shell, IIRC.

printf can be changed, declare can be changed. Ideas for agnostic
functions would be appreciated.

> o the script hangs when calling loadkeys, because loadkeys without
> arguments waits forever. A fix is to pass "loadkeys -V" as third
> argument to pv().

Not acceptable, perhaps --junkoption will suffice

> o if you assume bash why don't you try to convert all of the code into
> bash (inline functions) instead of using awk and sed like the old code
> did?

Because I'm not a bash guru and I'm trying to keep it as simple.

> o your script indicates that one should check for "not found/error" but
> this never appears, it should be "error getting version, try manually"

Fixed, thank you

> o the old script separated the loaded kernel modules with a space, the
> new code with a '\n'

Will be fixed, thank you

> o the old code correctly detects my "kbd" version, the new not, because
> you use setleds which on my machine reports: "KDGKBLED: Invalid
> argument"

This is one of the two big problems with this script. 'kbd' and
'console-tools' are developed in parallel. console-tools was forked
from kbd when the console-tools author felt the kbd author wasn't being
responsive or accepting updates to the kbd package. Both kbd and
console-tools vary significantly even within themselves as to version
reporting. I would like to get a large number of responses on this one
to develop a more accurate reporting of both kbd and console-tools.

> Why do you want to change this tool? To me it seems like an endless
> task because people don't code according to standards. For example if
> everyone could stick to let's say that 'progname --version' prints the
> version, things would be a lot easier.

Because it doesn't work as well as I want it to. The previous writers
of this script wrote it based on their choice of distribution and
installed packages. There has always been one or more strange outputs
or breakage when I run it . All of my software is compiled from
original tarballs or cvs from the original author. That means if the
script doesn't detect it correctly, then the script is trying to detect
a mutation of the original source, i.e. a package from a distribution.

This means that the script needs to evolve because different
distributions are going to have differing results.

I strongly agree that "--version" woud make life pretty simple here, but
unfortunately (i.e. kbd and console-tools).

In a side note, if anybody has a reliable way of getting pppd to
-always- report the version number, please tell me. To get it to fail,
put some junk in /etc/ppp/options, i.e. a not currently existing modem
device such as /dev/usb/acm/0.

Thank you for your feedback,
David



-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 15 2002 - 21:00:59 EST