Application Configuration GUI.

[Rempel, Cynthia]

Hi,

Okay, so we can probably strike out Eclipse (I don't use it that much either...).

If Python is used, I'm rather partial to a wxWidgets or straight tk solution, just because of so many issues with a specific host OS dependent graphical library.

The work-around to handling a wxPython dependency is include wx in the application.  One such discussion can be found: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6917456/how-can-i-package-my-python-application-with-external-python-libraries .

Although design tools are distasteful for some developers, using design a tool such as http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/785177-wxformbuilder for developing a rapid prototype would free the developer to concentrate more on the functionality, and less on tailoring the graphics.

So the overall idea (for a wx application) would be: 

1. a quick user mock-up done with a design tool, 
- either -
2a. a simple parser, and a script to quickly auto-generate the code from what the parser extracts into a format usable by the design tool
- or -
2b. a substitution script to put the code from either confdefs.h or rtems/doc/user/conf.t into a format usable by the design tool

3. a call to the design tool
4. a call to the packaging tool

The overall idea for a tk application would be steps 1-3.

IMO, learning a design tool may sound like an unnecessary step, but it will save time both in the short-run and long-run.  I also suspect that having the application automatically install wx would handle the wx dependency.
________________________________________
From: Chris Johns [chrisj at rtems.org]
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 5:06 PM
To: Rempel, Cynthia
Cc: Joel Sherrill; Shubham Somani; rtems-devel at rtems.org
Subject: Re: Application Configuration GUI.

Rempel, Cynthia wrote:
>
> I know Eclipse seems to work on Ubuntu, if we went that route,....
>

I do not use Eclipse and do not see myself using it in the future. An
Eclipse only path does not have my support. I see it as the equivalent
of me implementing this in Emacs lisp code.

Eclipse supporting RTEMS and maintained by RTEMS users is fantastic and
I welcome it how-ever we are talking about a few things here. The first
is a common configuration file and then code to manage it.

Chris