configurator/DESIGN.md

Version: 1 Status: DRAFT

Main design

Adding a module

For each module you want to add :

1. Create a directory inside modules/.
2. Inside this directory add the following files :
   1. module.cli The CLI version of the module that will be executed by default.
      This can be symlinked to system binaries, if you know what you're doing.
   2. DESC A description of the module.
      The first line should be brief, as it is shown in the list provided by the main configurator, when listing all the modules.
   3. armbian/cli/DEPS The list of additional Debian packages required to execute module.cli.
      Only put the dependencies that are not required by the configurator itself.

Adding a GUI (X11/Wayland) to a module

Adding a GUI to a module, inside modules/{module_name}, you need to add :

1. module.gui The GUI version of the module.
2. armbian/gui/DEPS The list of additional Debian packages required to execute module.gui.
   Only put the dependencies that are not required by the configurator itself.
   Dependencies shared with the CLI version still need to be written.

Symlinking to module.cli

It is possible to have a single executable managing both CLI and GUI, but remember that the CLI version MUST NOT depend on GUI libraries.
For example, you cannot ask for QT/GTK/OpenGL for CLI softwares.

Which mean that single executables managing CLI and GUI must load GUI libraries dynamically.
For scripting languages, you can branch load the libraries after a few sanity checks.
For compiled languages, you'll need to deal with dynamically loaded libraries.

So, think again before putting both in the same executable. Having two executables sharing the same configuration files and codebase might be far easier.

Adding a translation

Support for this feature will be added very soon

To add a translation for a module description, inside modules/{module_name}, create a DESC.{locale} file.

Precise locales are sampled before global ones, however avoid using precise locales names when you can.

Example

Let's say you want to add a French translation for a module description.

French locales start with fr.
French locale for people living in France specifically is : fr_FR.
French locale for people living in Canada specifically is : fr_CA.

So, if you want to add a french translation, add either a DESC.fr or DESC.fr_FR file.

If you add both DESC.fr_FR and DESC.fr, the system will use :

• DESC.fr_FR for people using the fr_FR locale.
• DESC.fr for people using fr_CA locale.

If you only add DESC.fr, the system will use :

• DESC.fr for people using the fr_FR locale.
• DESC.fr for people using fr_CA locale.

if you only add DESC.fr_FR, the system will use :

• DESC.fr_FR for people using the fr_FR locale.
• DESC (default english version) for people using the fr_CA locale.