I have been thinking about whether or not, or how, to get involved more in opensource, and in particular, opensource development. SIDE is my acronym for Scripting Integrated Development Environment. Here is the idea... After finishing a recent shellscripting project for use in an enterprise environment, a lightbulb went off in my head about something that could be done to make shellscript development into something that would be more maintainable in that environment. Specifically, I started with trying to structure my script to clearly identify error messages, of which there were several, and give them all symbolic names and then collect them all in one area for easier maintenance. Then I thought about doing the same with return codes for error exits. Then I abandoned that idea for the relatively small script I was working on, as being somewhat of a distraction from the development schedule, although I thought they might have some maintenance benefit, especially in more complex scripts, or in systems processes that involve multiple inter-related scripts. Then I started getting more brainstorms, like wouldn't it be nice to be able to take a more or less straightforward script with NO error checking, and have some "zooty" software generate ALL standard error checks (perhaps triggered by some sort of include style logic), as well as all error messages for problems encountered. Also to use something like a tidyperl on steroids to put the script into a "canonical" format. And then you could have another, optional, process in the development and deployment pipeline, one that would split things like the error messages and the return codes into separate files, and have them sourced into the main script module, so that the main source module would not be cluttered with all the lines defining symbolic error messages and return codes, just their hopefully descriptive names, but with the messages and codes files existing in correspondingly named files with unique extensions. And then I decided it was more than an hour or two of code, but not a Mt. Everest type of project. And there are some decided advantages, for example in regulated environments, to be able to set separate access controls on error messages, for example, vs. script logic. So I could see where I might have used something like this multiple times in past projects, had a tool like this been available. This is only a sketchy outline of an idea for some sort of scripting IDE, SIDE, for lack of a better name, or Advanced Scripting Integration eXecutive, ASIX, a/k/a A-6, for another name idea. This is not so much a question for individual system script developers, although I would welcome any constructive ideas by anyone who considers what the target audience is. Also, I envision that the concept could be extended to other subdomains, such as file locations, "chroot"-like prefixing for file locations, to support "poor boy's containers" or testing and acceptance environments, etc. (Which I also did, as part of my "noodling" around for ways to do scripting better in the so-called "real" world.) I am not thin-skinned, so if you think the whole idea is much ado about nothing, a tempest in a teapot, feel free to say so before I get psyched up and start tilting at a windmill. But if other people could relate to this, and would consider using something like this if it were available, I might build it (and see who comes, since I seem to be on a literary reference kick...) I've seen similar things done in heavy large-scale c development environments, but it seems that the world is evolving into more and more usage of glue languages as integration tools. I also think that this idea could encompass perl, as well as at least traditional, least-common denominator, bourne shell programs (emphasizing cross-platform portability), kornshell (ditto, but note to myself, beware of being burned by pdksh's that break scripts because read is not a built-in), and bash... It seems like the kind of thing I could pull off by myself, to get an initial design and build, and that could benefit from having other people help extend it. Do I have a glimpse of something that grow, in your opinion, or am I just putting rococo decorations on a baroque concept? As a closing note for now, I would also want it to be able to take existing "spaghetti" scripts, and reverse-engineer them, document their logic, and retro-fit this structure onto them in a guaranteed functionally equivalent way. If any tools already exist that could do any part of this, or any other idea I have expressed, it would be helpful to know what else might be out there that I am unaware of. There are a lot of places I could have floated this idea (yeah, I know, one of them is porcelain and contains several gallons of water and has a handle, but that's not what I mean), but I respect the diversity of ideas and experience on this forum, and would almost certainly develop it as part of the openSuSE distro (as its native location), should I decide to proceed. Dan Goodman Notice: This communication, including attachments, may contain confidential or proprietary information to be conveyed solely for the intended recipient(s). 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