[sword-devel] Automagical repos

[Peter von Kaehne]

On Sat, 2013-11-30 at 16:08 +0000, Peter von Kaehne wrote:
> Wouldn't it be nice have a new automagical repo set-up routine?

I have added a Perl script just now to sword-tools, it is under
sword-tools/repos.

The script tests a remote FTP server for presence of mods.d directories
which is the minimum requirement for a repo and then creates output
which could form a installmgr.conf file.

The script as such has not that much utility, but I think the logic
behind it would be really really, particularly for the more mobile
frontends, the idea being that one could add temporary repos for a short
session and maybe even install everything on offer from there.

Imagine you are running an installfest for And Bible, PocketSword,
Xiphos whatever in your church. Run on your laptop an FTP server and put
it onto the local WIFI network with a Sword repo with pre-selected
modules. USe the added facility of adding a temporary repo and suck it
dry - install everything on offer. 

And 10 minutes later everyone in the church/housegroup/study group/bible
class has all the material you want to share. No long explanations, no
long selections, no confusion. 

I certainly have done these kind of mass installations before and would
have welcomed anything to make it easier.

Also - this would be a real bonus in situations where one would not want
to encourage internet use, e.g countries with restrictions. And it would
be a bit more constructive than warning we currently put out.

Finally it would be useful for other repo owners who are not on our list
of associated repos - much easier to configure a new repo if you simply
have to add an FTP server address instead of a complete path etc. 

The limitations to my script, which one might want to sort prior to
introducing into either the engine or into frontends are:

1) I have only created the logic for FTP, ignoring the many other
transports we now support.
2) Only some FTP servers allow remote recursive listing which is what is
required to hunt down all repos deep inside an FTP server. MS' IIS
famously switched off the facility to do a recursive listing a few years
ago.
3) It finds everything - e.g. running it against ftp.crosswire.org will
find repos on the iso directories etc.

Peter

Peter