[Savannah-hackers] submission of Softainator, a tool to ease software maintenance - savannah.nongnu.org

[gouri]

A package was submitted to savannah.nongnu.org
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Stéphane Gourichon <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
License: gpl
Other License: 
Package: Softainator, a tool to ease software maintenance
System name: softainator
Type: non-GNU

Description:
Softainator is a small tool that makes life easier for GNU/Linux (and maybe 
other) systems user and administrator.

The main idea is that users declare the software they need once and for all in 
their homedir (they can update the list whenever they want, of course) and the 
system will ensure that all needed software will be available to users, 
filtered by some security checks (e.g. kernel packages are disallowed, the 
admin may disallow packages that install some servers like apache, etc...).

The primary targets are Linux distributions that rely on apt-get or urpmi, that 
is Debian Linux, Mandrakelinux, Red Hat Linux.

This is useful:
-for sites with numerous machines, as an alternative to network-mounted /usr to 
ensure that all software is available.
-for quick recovery : install a vanilla system and Maintanator, mount user 
dirs, and all the necessary software will come back quickly.
-for users that work on many sites : they only have to declare in electronic 
form that they like, say, emacs and icewm and a dozen other, then propagate 
this description to any other place they work (even if the local admin doesn't 
use maintainator he can still read the description and install by hand, until 
he's convinced :-).

You can think of Softainator as a
"SOFTware mAINtenance administrATOR" (or terminATOR if you like the idea of 
never have to care about software maintenance again :-).

The code, written in Python by Vincent Cuzin, from an idea by Stéphane 
Gourichon, has been in production at the AnimatLab, Computer Science Lab of the 
University of Paris 6 for about two years, serving a dozen of machines that 
have had hard disk problem and system re-install without a pain. Thanks to 
Softainator, all users have become confident to find the software they need on 
any workstation of the pool at any time.

The code currently handles advanced cases, like propagating the declared needs 
between desktop computers always connected and roaming laptops.

It is now in the process of cleaning up and packaging to be distributable to 
other teams in the lab and to the outside world.
The first versions will be soon posted on savannah.


Other Software Required:
python, urpmi, rpm, bash (okay, bash is always available :-).



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