Re: Patch to add install action to packages:

[rader]

 > >>> The evidence of such trouble is evident already in a much simpler area:
 > >>> recognizing operating system versions and releases.  HP-UX 11 had this
 > >>> problem, and the numerous various Linux distributions render this almost
 > >>> impossible to keep up with.  Does cfengine recognize White Box Linux? 
 > >>> TinySofa? Enguarde? Vine? Miracle? Red Flag?  And most importantly, can
 > >>> it be made to recognize these variants without recompiling?

 > >> Agreed, 100% with you on that one.  The magic string file method would
 > >> probably be a workable solution there, then folks would only have to
 > >> download the latest magic string file to be updated.  They could even
 > >> distribute that through cfengine as well via update.conf.  I still think
 > >> there'd have to be some level of detection in code to at least determine
 > >> the OS type (Linux, HP-UX, Solaris), since those are reliably obtainable
 > >> with uname(), but once that was known, a magic string check could
 > >> probably be applied to find specifically what you are dealing with.

I think you're confusing the detection of OSs (names and kernel
revs via uname) with Linux distributions here.

Cfengine already has OS detection via "uname", "uname -r" and
the like.

Kernel info (uname) doesn't work for detecting Linux distros:
different distros can have the same kernel names and versions
(eg Scientific Linux and RHEL.)

 > > Perhaps the module previously put up for Scientific Linux would work in a
 > > more general fashion?

Of course.
  
 >      I'd be in favour, but I don't know how others would feel about 
 > perl :).

Keep in mind that the classes my module defines won't work in
all places.  For example, it doesn't work in the "files:" section.
I haven't really investigated this peculiarity; I assume files:
gets evaluated before modules do.

steve 
- - - 
systems & network manager
high energy physics
university of wisconsin