Linux System Library

[Clemens Wacha <clemens.wacha@...>]

Hello,

I know C/C++, Perl ,Java, Visual Basic and a little apple script. What I
don't like about those languages: Either they are slow, complicated or
just not convenient for my purposes.

I am a lazy guy which does not like to write 500 lines of code just to
create a button and an edit box to display/change a simple ip-adress of
my computer. What I am looking for is an easy to use scripting language
with a fast native GUI binding in linux.

Lua is great for the backend stuff but it still lacks a nice gui binding
with little footprint. I already checked wxlua (too heavy, i dont need
crossplatform) and iup (ugly motif only and crossplatform). So i decided
to write a gtk2-native binding for lua in linux. So much for gui stuff.
But there are still some things missing.

To make lua a replacement for bash/sh scripting I also need some helper
functions:
config_read(string) returns table with config variables
config_write(table) writes the config file from the table

lots of system helper functions like
sys.xfree.bpp
sys.xfree.xres etc.
sys.network.ip
sys.network.interfaces etc.
sys.kernel.modules
sys.kernel.version
sys.kernel.uptime

etc.

The main goal behind this is to have functions that make system
attributes easy to read (maybe write/change one day) without knowing how
to read the specific config files etc. And it should be as distribution
independent as possible!

The reason why I don't use already existing software for linux is
because I couldn't find any. tcl/tk would fit best but motif looks ugly
compared to windows or mac. I would like to hear comments on this. What
do you think? Would you use such a library for scripting or would you
still prefer bash? I think that could help linux get more simple tools
like frontends to locate or grep and so on.

The problem of having yet another scripting tool is not so severe since
lua only weighs 500k. I could also think of an installer tool that scans
your script and creates a tar.gz with your script, lua itself and all
needed libraries to make it easier for others to use it withouht having
to deal with dependencies.

Now its your turn. 

Regards
Clemens
-- 
Clemens Wacha           wacha@gmx.ch           ICQ:12620942

proudly running Debian/GNU Linux. See http://www.debian.org