[Perlappinst-devel] Re: App::Info

[David Wheeler]

Moving this discussion over to the list, if for no other reason than that
we'll have a record of it later. :-)

On 6/4/02 12:56 PM, "Dave Rolsky" <address@hidden> claimed:

> You'll have to expand the API a lot.  For example, you may find an apache
> binary but find the wrong one.  Then having found the binary, you may find
> the wrong config file, etc, and so on.

I run into this on my OS X box, believe me.

> The approach I had started going for was to integrate prompting into the
> modules, but to simply use defaults (and give up when nothing is found) if
> started without a tty, or in 'no prompts' mode.

Right.

> I suppose I could simply restructure the prompting bits around App::Info,
> but it will be a _very_ thin shell.

Well, it makes sense to me to specialize parts of the API -- to break it up
into specialized objects. I was just focusing on one part of what an
installer needs to do -- try to find some relevant defaults by hunting
around the file system. Another piece of the API can handle prompts and that
sort of thing, but I hadn't got that far yet.

A thin shell is okay -- I think that smaller, specialized parts that work
well together (in a fully OO fashion) is a desirable design goal.

David

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