On 17-Aug-98 Perry E. Metzger spoke unto us all:
#  Tim Rightnour writes:
# > #1 More use of subwindows..  Use pipes to direct input from sub processes
# > #to
# > the sub-windows, to avoid screen transients.
#  
#  I'm wondering whether, at some point, we might want to look a bit more 
#  at alternatives to the wide use of subprocess calls we make.

I think subprocess calls are the way to go here..  It makes logging a breeze
with the use of popen,dup and fork..

My main idea here being.. when we integrate pkg building.. it can take place in
a window.. that only shows stdout.. stderr can go to the log, and the user wont
get blasted by all the "useless" install messages..

Other things can be done like this as well of course..  The user only needs to
see "It worked, everything is glorious" the details can be had in a script.

#  BTW, no offense to Phil intended, but we might want to look at whether 
#  some of the standard curses menu/window packages that come with
#  ncurses might make some of this easier. (Or maybe not!)

Wouldn't that involve either a big hack job to the ncurses examples, or a
import of ncurses?

# > #3 take a look at some post-install uses of sysinst.. such as disklabel
# > twiddling and basic admin tasks.. (possibly opening the door for future use
# > with packages)
#  
#  For this, we should probably start modularizing the code a bit...

Perhaps..  #3 is more of a wish list than a "here I go!"

IMHO sysinst should open up with a menu that says:
a) Install/Upgrade
b) Post Intstall Maintinence
c) help?

And thats it.

---
Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.net
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html