V0.19 and pwlconfig design notes...

[Adi Linden]

Hi,

> I downloaded the 0.19 source file today (pretty good response for downloads
> from sourceforge...haven't tried your new ftp yet). Looks like a lot of stuff
> in there..not sure what it all is though...

There are still duplicate sources in there. The originals and the
extracted, modified, comiled ones for PWL. I only patched boa so far. I
have to work throught the other ones too.

Still need to decide wether to do the tar thing or use rpm.

> I started on the next release of pwlconfig.  I've integrated it so it can use
> my "mkBootDevice" shell script, now I just have to add a few parameters to the
> project.  So far I can only come up with a handfull of "project" specific
> parameters, but I'm planning on a menu that will let you enter these items into
> a "...projects/myproject/project.default" file. (you can manually edit it or
> use the menus).  Adding more parameters anytime should be a breeze...
> 
> >From Main Menu->Manage project
> "Project Device Type: DOC"
> "Project Device Location: /dev/fla1"
> "Project Mount Point: ./mnt"
> "Boot Label: pwlboot"
> "File System Compressed: no"
> "Default source for custom files: /home/ralph/SRC"
> "<suggestions ???>"
> 
> Cursor through these items and select them to change them.  Its a little
> overhead (script coding) to provide an interactive menu, but it keeps all the
> pwl stuff integrated in the pwlconfig script.  I think I'll keep these
> functions in a small script, like "pwl_default", that gets called by pwlconfig
> or from the command line.

So thi would allow for a configuration to be 'totally' configured with
pwlconfig, where the projects files go, where the temp mount point is?

> I split out some of the utility functions to shorten the pwlconfig script and
> also to share these between the scripts.  Small sharp tools and all that...

Good idea.

> After this release, I'll start on integrating the "build package"
> scripts...then what ?? The compressed file system should be good challenge
> too...almost forgot about that one...

Ok, of the main menu there should be a configuration section to set
whatever parameter for the project. Another main section should be the
package selection portion and extraction of these files to the configured
mount point. The next major meu item should be about what to with the
build filesystem, i.e. load a DOC or flash, create  a ramdisk, iso image,
tar file, etc...   

> Probably need to start building a couple of default projects..once users
> download the binaries, they should be able to download "router", "thin client"
> and so on - maybe 5-10K each - or the "Project of the Month".  Since I haven't
> gotten anything to work yet, I can't help here :-(  

Yup, I fried a DOC. Don't know how I did it, but if I boot my development
system on the embedded box I get a kernel message 'cannot access
/dev/fla...'. I tried using the dos tools to restore it to a DOS disk with
the original boot sector. It tells me it is not a FFS device. I s there
warranty on these???

> Best thing to do is see if you can build one of your working projects just
> using pwlconfig...that should be a good test :-)

Yup, planning on doing that with the dialin box. Also, plan on doing this
for the satellite router as part of doing the documentation of how to
build it. It's sometimes a pain to do docs and decide what knowledge the
reader should have (in how much detail to go).

> BTW, I tried your generate_list script (after I noticed that my "include all"
> wasn't working since there were no list files to include).  It kept killing my
> xterm window...so, I played with it...(hacker mentality - not my code, it must
> be tweaked!;-) and add a "--remove" function...and set it up to work from
> either directory (Embedded_Build or Embedded_Build/scripts). I'll post it

Good stuff, I am considering myself a beginner when it comes to perl and
shell scripts. I think bacause I didn't formally learn it I missing some
basics but at the same time know a lot of adavanced stuff because of all
the other programming stuff I did. I am still having a bit of a hard time
with having the script determine how it was invoked and where it live.

The `pwd` command would give you the location from where the script was
started. The '$0' variable includes the path and script name to get to the
script from the 'pwd' location. Maybe using these 2 it would be possible
to jump to predefined starting point?

TTYL,
Adi

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