[Fusioninventory-devel] fusioninventory 3.0: the big picture

[Guillaume Rousse]

Hello.

Here is a first list of major changes for the current development tree.

First, there is no more 'fusioninventory-agent' monolithic executable,
but two:
- fusioninventory-server, running continuously until stopped, supporting
either forking (unix) or non-forking mode (windows)
- fusioninventory-worker, executing a single task against a single target

No more confusing 'server mode' vs 'single-shot/cron/whatever mode' in
documentation, and a lot less conditionals in the code.

Second, no more confusion between configuration and command line. Some
of them have nothing to do in a configuration file (--help, --version,
...), and some of them are only valid for the worker, not for the server
(--lazy, --wait, ...). So, we now have three set of configuration
directives:
- command-line options for the server
- command-line options for the worker
- configuration parameters, shared by both

Third, no task-specific command-line options anymore, as the agent is
supposed to be task-independant. Task-specific directives can still be
used, in specific configuration blocks.

Fourth, we now use a structured configuration, using either an INI-style
configuration file, or a multi-level registry entry. This allow easily
to have multiple targets and tasks of any type, with task-specific or
target-specific options. The following examples show how to run two
tasks against three targets, the local target using html format:

targets = ocs, fusion, local
tasks = inventory, discovery

[ocs]
type = server
url = http://localhost/ocsinventory

[fusion]
type = server
url =
http://localhost/glpi/plugins/fusioninventory/front/plugin_fusioninventory.communication.php

[local]
type = local
path = /tmp
format = html

[inventory]
type = inventory

[discovery]
type = discovery
community = public
snmp = 1
netbios = 0

I just pushed the changes in my own branch on github. The server doesn't
work, but the worker allow to run and test the code quite easily.

-- 
BOFH excuse #238:

You did wha... oh _dear_....