Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] GSoC application: tails-greeter

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Autor: intrigeri
Data:  
Para: M
CC: Damian Johnson, Tor Assistants, The T\(A\)ILS public development discussion list, tech
Assunto: Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] GSoC application: tails-greeter
Hi,

M wrote (07 Apr 2011 13:50:40 GMT) :
> Anyway - custom app (a.k.a "crippled dm" :) will have to do exactly
> the same as tails-greeter plus something: thus it will be definitely
> bigger and harder to maintain. Not worth trying in my opinion: port
> tails-greeter to changes in dm<->greeter interface will be rare and
> easy task, maintaining "crippled dm" - is a constant pain.


You've convinced me, thanks.

> Overall - I've updated my proposal with subtasks, detailed schedule
> and some design decisions.


> Later on this update shall be moved to wiki page(s).
> please take a look,


I'm fine with the detailed subtasks description that arose from our
discussion. I like the two-steps process you ended up with while
splitting GSoC and post-GSoC tools selection (GDM -> LightDM, GConf ->
dconf).

Your schedule seems a bit weird to me:
  - the Community Bonding Period is not week #0, but a full month; I
    guess you do know this, considering the amount of stuff you put in
    there; but presenting it like this is at the very least surprising
  - you only schedule 9 weeks, while the coding period covers 3
    months; why?


Also, now that the raw content is ready, I think you should work a bit
on the general organization of your proposal and on its markup, both
of which being currently rather crude (there are still some questions
text mixed with your answers in random order).

To end with, there is the programming language choice thing:

> - programming language (C if gdm-simple-greeter is forked\extended
> or vala if tails-greeter is made from scratch)


The choice of C if gdm-simple-greeter is forked/extended is obvious.
The choice of Vala in case tails-greeter is written from scratch is
not obvious to me. AFAIK you've not answered my previous questions [0]
regarding this. Let me paste these (with quotes from you to provide
the context) bellow again.

[0] Message-Id: <854o6g4udm.fsf@???>

> Right now vala\genie seems like the ideal variant. Python is also an
> option. Plain old C - is the "last resort" variant :)


I would be more comfortable to mentor your work if you chose Python.
But if Vala seems much more appropriate to you, just use that. Why
does is seem "the ideal variant" BTW?

>> - The code sample you sent us is in Python. Is this the language
>> you are the best at? Could you provide some other code samples?


> Attached in simple multi-threaded server I've made ages ago as part
> of university programming course. I think I'm mostly proficient in
> C\C++ and Perl, Python comes pretty close to Perl.


(Perl is the language I would be the most at ease to mentor.)

What are the obstacles that prevent you from implementing
tails-greeter in Perl? Missing bindings? Binding on CPAN but not in
Debian? Other issues?

I'd anyway be glad to see what kind of Perl you write; as you do know,
there are plenty ;)

Bye,
--
intrigeri <intrigeri@???>
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