ANNOUNCE: Helix Setup Tools 0.2.0

[Hans Petter Jansson <hpj helixcode com>]

About this release
------------------

The Helix Setup Tools 0.2.0, aka "Un-ix", is out. It's been a while since the
last release, and a lot has happened.

ftp://ftp.helixcode.com/pub/setuptools/helix-setup-tools-0.2.0.tar.gz

This is a working snapshot of a continuous effort, and the project is still
in its infancy. As such, there are no guarantees of usability, beauty or
evil masterplan compliance.

However, the probability that you'll actually corrupt or lose any part of
your system configuration due to a programming mistake is very low. We've
tested all the features of all the tools on our own workstations (and the
workstations of some innocent bystanders), and we didn't harm even one of
them.

Anyway, coming releases are going to be more frequent, so you can expect
swift action if you have any complaints.


Tools in this release
---------------------

Networking       Configures your primary network adapter for TCP/IP.
Name Resolution  Hostname, domain, DNS, WINS, statichosts, search, workgroup.
Memory           Swap partitions and files.
Time             System clock, timezone, timeserver synchronization.
Users            Users and groups.
Disks            Find local harddisk partitions and mount them.
Shares           NFS, SMB. Export, detect, import.


Participation
-------------

We need help, in particular to test these tools and port them to as many
Unixy platforms and distributions as possible.

If this seems like a worthy challenge, please get in touch with us. Further
information can be found in the references section below.

Also, if you have any problems with these tools (identified in detail or
not), we'd be absolutely delighted to hear from you.


Changes
-------

- Merged the existing tools into one package with shared, policy-enforcing
  code for the frontends. [Hans Petter]

- Shared Perl code for backends and a cleanup of existing Perl code. [Arturo]

- Implemented Time. [Hans Petter]

- Implemented Memory. [Bradford]

- Implemented Disks. [Hans Petter]

- Implemented Users. [Arturo, Tambet]

- Re-implemented parts of Memory to make the backend do all the config
  detection and manipulation. [Tambet]

- Simple protocol that allows the backends to tell the frontends about their
  progress, and progress indicators in all frontends, added. [Hans Petter]

- Handling of fstab is more gentle, preserving all manually set options,
  e.g. NFS' wsize, rsize. [Hans Petter]

- Integration with the new control-center. At this point, you need CVS
  control-center to make it work, but the icons show up in the old one as
  well. [Bradford, Hans Petter]

- Shares has more robust handling of user input. [Hans Petter]

- Totally reworked the timezone selector in the early release of Time. It now
  has locations instead of GMT offset strips, uses GdkPixbuf directly (faster
  and better-looking), and has some special effects. All of this is in a
  reusable widget called EMap and a surrogate widget-like layer called
  ETzMap. [Hans Petter]

- Debian support for Networking. [David Lee Ludwig]

- Shares now has more workarounds for pessimal SMB situations, like Windows
  master hosts that serve empty host lists (in error). [Hans Petter]

- Build-time massaging of interfaces and backends that makes life more
  comfortable and more conforming. [Arturo]

- Red Hat 7.0 fixes. [Hans Petter]


About the Helix Setup Tools
---------------------------

- Primary audience - desktop users:

  These tools are intended to simplify the tasks of configuring a Unix system
  for workstations. They are not intended for configuring Unix servers.

- Unified system configuration:

  Configuring different Unix systems is different; every Unix system has
  different ways of being administrated. The Helix Setup Tools aspire to
  unify handling of these systems.

- Adaptability:

  Each one of the Helix Setup Tools is split in two parts: a backend (which
  is typically written in Perl) and a user interface frontend (which is
  typically written in C or Python).

  The backends are written in a way that should allow us to quickly adapt
  them to different flavors of Unix; the backend probes your system and
  parses the existing system files. When the user has finished editing the
  settings, the configuration is written back as patches to the system files.

  This means that the Helix Setup Tools use whatever configuration files are
  available on your system, and you can still edit those files by hand or
  with other configuration tools without conflicts or data loss.


References
----------

Introduction: http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/setuptools.php3

Whitepaper:   http://www.helixcode.com/tech/helix-setup-tools.php3

Mailing list: http://lists.helixcode.com/mailman/listinfo/gnome-admin-tools

FTP:          ftp://ftp.helixcode.com/pub/setuptools/

GNOME CVS:    Module "helix-setup-tools".

Maintainer:   Hans Petter Jansson <hpj helixcode com>


--
Hans Petter