Application Configuration GUI.

Sat Apr 6 22:39:09 UTC 2013

On 04/06/2013 05:25 PM, Rempel, Cynthia wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I agree, we want to benefit from the maintenance of others, and using existing tools with minimal modifications does that well.
>
> I don't know that much about crosstool-ng, but their site indicates Buildroot is based off of it, which works on Ubuntu, so it's promising (but more research is needed) on the Linux front.
>
> Crosstool-ng also is a design tool that includes menu-config, so that's good too.  It may be possible that menu-config is available as a separate download, I just didn't find it.
>
> For non-shell users, we may be able to devise a Cygwin script to compile the application configuration GUI into something...
>
> Looks like a promising option!
I think researching the options as part of the proposal and working
with us is key to this project succeeding.[1]

 From my experience on that customer project, it is indeed a summer
of work.  Getting menuconfig (and friends) in a "bundle" we are happy
to give users is a step. Having one canonical set of configuration 
information
that feeds both the user's manual and the configuration tool is another.

Unless someone gets very lucky, I think it is a summer's work.

[1] Assuming we are included in GSOC this year. Announcement tomorrow. :)
> ________________________________________
> From: Joel Sherrill [joel.sherrill at oarcorp.com]
> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 1:19 PM
> To: Rempel, Cynthia
> Cc: Chris Johns; Shubham Somani; rtems-devel at rtems.org
> Subject: Re: Application Configuration GUI.
>
> One solution is to use the menuconfig system from the Linux
> kernel. They support multiple user interfaces and it would only be a
> matter of providing our configuration options to it in the right format.
>
> We would have to package the source for our end users.
>
> The big questions to me is portability. At one point in the past, this
> was an independent project but I am no longer sure it is.
>
> I used this configuration system for a complex end user library I
> consulted on. If this is a feasible alternative, we save a LOT of
> work.
>
> Similar crosstool-ng may have some helpful and simple infrastructure
> to do this.
>
> Keeping this simple and not being totally RTEMS project responsibility
> to maintain long term has value.
>
> --joel
>
> On 04/05/2013 09:01 PM, Rempel, Cynthia wrote:
>> 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
>>
>>
>
> --
> Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research& Development
> joel.sherrill at OARcorp.com        On-Line Applications Research
> Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35806
> Support Available               (256) 722-9985
>
>
>

-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research& Development
joel.sherrill at OARcorp.com        On-Line Applications Research
Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35806
Support Available               (256) 722-9985