GLEP:15

Abstract
There is currently no central repository for scripts that are useful in administering a Gentoo system. This GLEP proposes a way to deal with this issue.

Status Update
Expect the first alpha release by the end of November or so.

Motivation
There are many small tasks on a Gentoo system that can be made much easier and fault-proof by scripting. However, not everyone has the experience to write such scripts; those that do have the choice of tracking down scripts on developer's webpages or with a search engine, or writing them themselves, often duplicating effort that has been already done by other people.

A better solution would be to have a repository of these scripts on www.gentoo.org.

Specification
A scripts@gentoo.org email alias would be setup and forwarded to the team that will accept and publish these scripts to the website. The team will need access to a portion of the website, but just enough to add the scripts, and update links from the main "scripts" page. I would propose it be a subproject of the tools or base top level project. The scripts team would need commit access to gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/[base|tools]/scripts/. It shouldn't increase the load on gentoo.org significantly.

The scripts should be divided by type of task, for example sysadmin, gentooadmin, misc, and internally well-commented. If there are enough then it might be appropriate to have a search interface.

Rationale
A repository on gentoo.org would address the problem of not having a central point where all the scripts reside; and as gentoo.org is trusted by most gentoo users, it would also solve the problem of running scripts without knowing their exact effect. Further trust could be generated by having developers sign their scripts and uploading the signatures in parallel. Periodically, a snapshot could be taken of the repository, the scripts QA'd, and a package made and distributed.

Having a well-publicised script repository would also ease major changes to the distribution, and could be a first line of defence to provide workarounds for security problems in packages.

Backwards Compatibility
Not a problem for this GLEP.

Copyright
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.