Call for lensers
The first step for UCSA is already done! Augeas finally got it’s second ACK! So we just need to wait until the archive admins include it on the archive! I’ve been working on it’s packaging and resolving a really disturbing Bug, but given the help i have received from the really lovely, patient and helpful reviewers it’s already accepted (Thank you all guys! 
).
Now we need to focus on the next step of it, where i will appreciate really much if you want to help on it. It doesn’t need a lot of knowledge, so if you want to get involved on ubuntu and don’t know how, this is your shot!
How you ask? I will answer this question later, first a little description about augeas:
Augeas is a configuration editing tool. It parses configuration files in their native formats and transforms them into a tree. Configuration changes are made by manipulating this tree and saving it back into native config files.
But, how does it recognizes all the native formats of the configuration files? It’s not black magic, well it’s almost black magic, but it need some recipes for it, and those area called lenses.
Great, but, what are those lenses? Lenses are the building blocks of the file < -> tree transformation; they combine parsing a file and building the tree (the get transformation), with turning the tree back into an (updated) file (the put transformation).
Sounds awesome, but also really hard… You know what? It’s not hard, they are just a list of regular expressions and directives in a really easy format, don’t believe me? Give a look at the official documentation on how to write them. It’s not hard, you just need to know (or learn) the syntax of those config files and the POSIX regexp syntax (man re_syntax).
Awesome i want to help! Tell me how!! Ok, i have create a wiki page with the lenses we have now and the ones we want, so you only need to give a look at it and start working on the lense you want after assigning it to yourself. Once you have it, please file a Bug against augeas with the following format:
Summary: Please add lense for $PACKAGE
Description: Augeas doesn’t support $PACKAGE configuration files.
And attach your lense to it.
Also if you feel like you want to, send it to upstream using their list (augeas-devel AT redhat DOT com), or just let me send it.
So, let’s work on this little things to have UCSA as soon as possible and make ubuntu even better!
P.D: If you write a lense also add a comment on it with your name an e-mail to have track of who wrote them like this:
(* Written by Joe Hacker <joe.hacker@isp.net> *)
nxvl @ July 6, 2008
[...] i said on my previuos post augeas got it’s 2 acks in ubuntu, so it’s on the new queue waiting for an archive [...]
[...] nxvl reported that his augeas package had been uploaded to the archive and was waiting for a review by an archive admin. The next step is to write more lenses for the services that we’d like to support: he created such a list and is looking for help to write lenses. [...]
This is a fantastic idea that should have been done a long time ago. How do you handle multifile configs like /etc/apache/conf.d and such? Or does augeas work only at the file abstraction level?
If you can reply to my e-mail, I’d appreciate it very much.
[...] break it on the way you want (and report the breakages on LP). Also you take a look at the list and write some lenses! This is your shoot to start contributing to ubuntu and specially the server team. Have a nice [...]
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