What?

Source Mage is the linux distro I use, help lead, and attempt to improve upon in my spare time.

Why?

I don't like having to learn the Distro specific way of doing thins. Source Mage doesn't do anything that shouldn't be done. What that really means: The distro stays out of the admin's way. It doesn't do anything but automate the installing and uninstalling of packages. No default configs, except what is provided by the upstream software provider. No fancy configuration tools to build system configuration. Only VI (as if there was any other editor ;P) and text files galore. Amazingly this keeps things very simple.

What I dislike

I have come to be very irritated at a few things in SMGL. I will attempt to detail the items and get some work done on them. I actually feel somewhat motivated to do so, and I think it would benefit the Source Mage User Community greatly.

Standardized Metadata files

The DETAILS, DEPENDS, CONFIGURE, SUB_DEPENDS, and PRE_SUBDEPENDS files all describe metadata for a spell. They don't do any of the building, only describe how to prep the environment, or how to get it. Standardizing the content of these files could provide a significant benefit to the community. Many different frontents could easily be implemented for configuration, rather than just the current command line interface. Also, validation could happen, given a DTD or a schema file. This can improve the quality of the files and help prevent bugs. Downsides are that it's not as simple to add more logic to the system as it is when the file is pure bash. But I think the benefits outweigh the potential losses. Especially when it comes to automated version updates and testing automated builds. Having a standardized API, possibly building off some already existing format, like YAML, would allow for much more automation to happen. Using something like YAML still allows for easy human editing of the file, which is very important. It also keeps the files on the disk, and doesn't mandate the use of a precompiled database, which is difficult to modfy by hand when the system is operational.

Work?

I do some work on the project, although not as much as I like. I tend to have motivational issues. I get burnt out at work, instead of being spun up Anyways, this page will have links to projects that I think up or intend to work on, or might have worked on, once or otherwise.

Pages

It doesn't start with W

SourceMage