Re: Getting $(allclasses) into a shellcommand

[Ed Brown]

Mark,

Having to pass extremely long $(allclasses) strings makes me wonder if
it is having to convey too much information, simply because it is the
only convenient way to do that.

Cfengine's ability to dynamically update $(allclasses) makes me wish I
could define my own variable[s] that could be dynamically updated.

Specifically, in the case of 'packages:', since that is where we started
with this, if I could define $(rpms) (or $(distro_rpms) and
$(third_party_rpms) and $(uninstall_rpms)...), then add to or subtract
from these inside of 'packages:', based on the existing tests, package
management with cfengine would get much easier, and $(allclasses) would
not get so overloaded.

Something like the following...
control:
      rpms = ( wget:strace ) # Beginning list; for everybody
packages:
   WebServer::          
      httpd  elsedefine=httpd usevariable=rpms
   
where 'usevariable=...' is new syntax, and sets the variable to be
updated.  For a WebServer, $(rpms) is now "wget:strace:httpd".

(Being able to declare a space-separated string value, that would not be
iterated over in 'shellcommands:', with hyphens and plus signs, would be
total icing (passed straight to an install command), but I could work
with existing rules, and continue to substitute for special chars and
parse the string in a wrapper script... ) 

thanks for welcoming ideas,
Ed
 

On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 13:20, Mark.Burgess@iu.hio.no wrote:
> I am interested in finding a different solution to this problem.
> Any ideas would be welcome.
> 
> M
> 
> On 19 Jul, Chip Seraphine wrote:
> > On Friday 16 July 2004 13:23, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> >> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, tzz@lifelogs.com wrote:
> >> 
> >> >> Anyway, I am having issues passing these large lists of classes into 
> >> >> the 
> >> >> perl script that does the actual RPM installation.  [snip]
> >> > Why not put it all in a text file with editfiles:, then parse that
> >> > with Perl?
> > 
> > That was my fallback position, but that doesn't work either.  I get the 
> > same 
> > truncation if I try to do this:
> > 
> > AppendIfNoSuchLine "$(allclasses)"
> > 
> > ...so presumably editfiles and shellcommands use the same size buffer.
> > 
> >> Oh, and of course you don't have to use Perl :)
> > 
> > Blasphemy!  Of *course* it has to be Perl!!!  :-)
> >  
> >> Ted
> > 
> 
> 
> 
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