Re: Re: try-ark problem: reveal arkbase

Harlan wrote:

> I think you sent me a message saying I should stop using
> try-ark (or your ark-world script) and start incanting
> Something Else instead.

Hi, Harlan (et al.). It's a free country so you can do what
you want :-); however, *I* don't use those scripts in
day-to-day life.

Once a site is kinda ARKified (Sidai-style), then the main
whole-hog command you're likely to use day-to-day is:

    ark package reveal ALL

perhaps with a --verbose in there, or a --hosts=. if you're
only interested in one machine at the moment.

If you're working on getting a specific package going (a
common task), it's likely to be:

   ark package compile --hosts=our-sun-box --verbose specific--1.2.3

ark-world and try-ark just don't feature.

Now...  If you're starting from NO ARK WHATSOEVER, the first
thing you gotta do is get the right Python, PyXML, GCC,
etc., on at least one box of each flavor.

Second, you've got to kickstart the ARK stuff (again, on at
least one host of each kind), which (regrettably) means a
fairly delicate order for getting things started.

ark-world (now available in
sidai/ark-pkg-mgmt/ark-world.sample) simply does that second
bit.  Its last line is simply a fancy 'ark package reveal
ALL'; in fact, most of its huff-and-puff is to support a
--scrub option, **WHICH YOU USE AT GREAT PERIL**.

try-ark (sample1/try-ark/try-ark) is simply an ark-world
with some sanity-checking of your XML files stuck on the
front.  (Simply because: if you run ARK with duff XML files,
e.g. referring to hosts that don't exist at your site, you
will get utterly incomprehensible Python-traceback
messages.)

For the record, other scripts that Matt and I find ourselves
using fairly often are arkbase-update and ark-invasive, both
in sidai/ark-pkg-mgmt/.

> OBTW, why did the dtd files go away?  They might be useful
> for auto-checking the .xml files.

We ditched validating XML parsing.  Too slow.  And serves
little purpose: you've got to write code to check everything
for *semantics* anyway, so the (syntactic) DTD-based
checking doesn't really buy anything.

Also: if we insisted on DTDs, then all ARK sites have to
have like-structured .xml files.  What if, for example, I
want to add a mandatory <university-asset-tag> element to my
<host> files? -- are you going to be happy to add that to
all of your <host> files?

Finally: the XML people are going off of DTDs and heading
towards XML Schemas and other such complications.

We ARK types may want to rejoin the validation party, but I
strongly suspect it will be in another form.  I'm in favor
of as much useful validation as we can conjure up.

Hope this helps,

Will