Re: [Pengfork-devel] Improvements

[Jean-Charles Salzeber]

On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 13:28, Nicolas Burrus wrote:
> Hello, I think I'm inaugurating this mailing list :)
> 
Hi Nicolas!
Right, you're the very first one :)
Thanks for starting the conversation.

> Since the projects seems to have a new start, I have some features 
> suggestions (I have already done partially some of them in my hacked version 
> of pengaol 1.0 beta) :
I'm also working on a new version... but I'm reimplementing it from scratch.
I use C for it ,not for political reason, but I think peng should be in
C because:
  1) there are more C developpers than C++
  2) peng use many low-level functions (interface handling, i/o functions, ...)
  3) C is more portable
  4) pppd and similars programs use C, why not peng!?
  5) ... ?

> 
> Clean up the code 
> =============
> 
> 1) Indentation is awful, maybe should use GNU coding style ?
> 
> 2) Many things are in hard in the code, such as configuration files path,  
> etc ... it should be set by the configure scripts.
> 
> 3) C-style syntax for I/O, it is c++, so it should use std::cout, etc ... 
> instead of C printf. Same things for list, stl lists are more adapted.
> 
> 4) Command line options parsing : would be better and more standard with 
> getopt.
> 
> 5) Use autoconf & automake exclusively, I don't see the utility of the 
> recompile script ! ./configure --prefix=/opt/pengaol-1.0 && make && make 
> install should work and install binaries in /opt/pengaol-1.0/bin.
> 
> 6) Comments should be in english everywhere.
> 
> 7) Clean up logging messages, add syslog handling, etc ...
> 
> 8) Clean the source tree, directories are not well chosen I think, peng/peng 
> for the sources should be peng/src for example.
> 
> 9) Make pengui a separated projects, maybe a subdirectory, I think most 
> people want a light version of pengaol by default.
> 
Agree with all your suggestions.
I would add that we should use:
  * gettext for internationalization
  * In general, POSIX compliant stuff
  * A better/more complete configuration file

As you say, in the present version of pengaol, there are some functions that
should be lighten, they use some hard-coded values, or similar and they
should be reimplemented cleanly.


> New features
> ==========
> 
> 1) Make daemon mode beeing a real one, backgrounding the process, etc ...
> 
> 2) Add --disconnect option which kill existing pengaol session
> 
> 3) Check running version with a /var/run/pengaol.pid file or thinks like that.
> 
> Ok, I stop here for my first ideas, I wait for feedback :)
> 
Hey... thanks I forgot the /var/run/pengaol.pid in what I'm working
on...

I think a third-party 'pengctl' program could be used to disconnect.
This program could also start peng, have some statistics information, and
could be used to control peng with the GUI and eventually others third-party
programs like an email/newgroups/... wrapper.

I wait for feedback too... :)

> -- 
> Nicolas Burrus

JC

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