[Asterisk-Dev] PyGTK Asterisk UI

[Adam Goryachev]

On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 13:11, Steven Sokol wrote:
> How do you envision this administration framework "attaching" to Asterisk?
> In scanning the mailing list, I have seen a number of postings in which
> people suggest re-writing Asterisk (or important chunks of it) using OO
> methods and tools.  In each case, the community seems to react negatively,
> primarily because Asterisk is as close to a real-time application as you can
> get in a non-real-time environment.  Most seem to feel that, generally
> speaking, OO languages add too much overhead.

Without even thinking about what you are talking about (it basically
terrifies me to think that you are asking to allow an external program
to modify the memory/config structures...)

I would think we simply need a way, from the manager interface, to say:
reload <application|channel|whatever>

Which would call a function within that channel/application to actually
to the reload. If the function/application doesn't support this, then it
simply returns, otherwise, it does it. In the beginning, a quick stub
function that simply returns is added to all the existing
channel/applications.

This allows you to only reload the iax2.conf file, or only the sip.conf,
etc...

As far as the rest of the stuff, you are going back to talking about
re-writing the config loader portions of asterisk to support different
config backends (DB/text file/xml/etc). I still agree with most people
that instead you should store your intermediate data in your preferred
database/format, and use a small utility to convert from that 'internal'
format to the current conf files. Later, when there are enough people
using mysql (as an example) as the intermediate format, then asterisk
will be extended to read direct from mysql instead of from config files.
This is like a chicken-egg problem. You need users of your format before
asterisk will be changed to read it, but you need asterisk to read it
before people will use it. So just write the bit of glue to allow your
format be converted to asterisk, and later, it won't be needed anymore.

In short, don't bite off more than you can chew, do a small bit first.

I hope that half of all that makes sense.

Just my own 0.02c worth.