Attempt at an ARK Synopsis (was: Re: the .tar/.tgz/.tar.gz wars) (was: Re: some try-ark suggestions) (was: ARK Core Competencies)

On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 09:20:26PM +0100, Will Partain wrote:
> One reason I am reluctant to get too clever about this
> ungzipping/untarring, though, is I would like the
> tarball-that-was-used to be readily apparent, i.e. I want it
> to be easy to have a webpage that says, "This package was
> built from <that tarball over there>", with the info from
> ARK-land.  If that exact tarball was not specifically
> specified, but came out of the bowels of some shell-script
> logic, then that's harder to do.
> 
> Again, there's kind of a philosophy thing here:  Your ARK
> .xml files are supposed to express "this is what I used to
> and how I built my site", not "this is some stuff I got from
> sourceforge that managed to guess what I should use to build
> my site".  Hmmm...

Restating and merging with the "ARK Core Competencies" thread, this
sounds something like:

	ARK is an extensible language for precisely expressing systems
	administration tasks, methodologies, and habits.  The language
	is written in XML syntax, and is optimized for collaborative,
	modular code sharing.  There is an interpreter currently
	available, written in Python, also named 'ark'.  

	The http://ark.sourceforge.net site includes example code,
	written in ARK, for doing systems administration using various
	administration teams' policies and procedures.  These examples
	can be combined with your own, or any other, team's code to
	create a description of your own unique site, its processes,
	and procedures.

	Actions described in the ARK language need not be limited to
	direct manipulation of machines: the language is intended to
	be flexible enough to assist with other systems administration
	tasks, such as equipment orders or trouble tickets.

	The web site includes a simple demonstration of ARK, showing
	how ARK and some of the example code can be used to drive
	builds of generic GNU packages.  See
	http://ark.sourceforge.net/try-ark1.html.

Do I have that even approximately right?

Steve
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