YaST/Tutorials/Simple YaST Module/Starting Up

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Starting Up

The next step is to begin actual development.

Creating a New YaST Module

The fastest way to create a new YaST module is to use the powerful y2tool script that, among many other things, can generate the directory structure for a new module and fills it with standard project files from a template. This tool is a part of yast2-devtools package.

To view all available options for y2tool, enter the command:

/usr/bin/y2tool --help

You should get something similar to this list

create-new-package   gettextdomains       pot-spellcheck  y2autoconf
create-spec          check_icons          rny2rnc         y2automake
devtools-migration   checkin-stable       showy2log       y2compile
for-proofread        check-textdomain     svnall          y2makeall
generateYCPWrappers  check_ycp            tagversion      y2makepot
get-lib              kill-leftover-stuff  version

We want to create a new YaST module (package), so the most suitable option seems to be the create-new-package option. To view all suboptions for it, enter the command

/usr/bin/y2tool create-new-package

This is what you should get

Usage:
   create-new-package [-dsv] <skeleton> <name> <maintainer> <email>

   -v   verbose
   -d   debug
   -s   list of available skeletons

   skeleton   - the one which should be used (config, trans, ...)
   name       - of the component. A package name will be constructed
                like yast2-skeleton-name
   maintainer - his name
   email      - maintainer's, of course :-)

This command will create a new standard configuration module called sshd with John The Fish as the author:

/usr/bin/y2tool create-new-package -v config sshd "John The Fish" "john@thesmallfish.net"

You will get this structure of directories:

sshd
     agents    - SCR Agents
     doc       - Auto-generated documentation
     package   - Special directory for building RPM package with a .changes file
     src       - Project source files
     testsuite - Project automatic testsuites

You can download the just created package here.

Checking the Progress

We have just created a new YaST sshd configuration module but how to start and run this module? The answer is pretty easy...

Installing Project on the System

This is the way how to install the current state of the project into the system:

1. Enter the directory with source files: cd sshd
2. Check whether needed packages are installed and call YaST scripts needed for creating Makefiles: make -f Makefile.cvs
3. Check syntax, comments of functions, create generated documentation, compile *.ycp modules into their binary form *.ybc: make
4. Install all into particular directories, you have to become 'root' for that: sudo make install

IMPORTANT: If there are any problems, it drops out a warning or an error message. Missing development package must be installed, syntax error must be fixed.

Once you have installed it for the first time, you only need to call sudo make install if you do some changes in the source code.

Running the Application

If there were no errors during the previous steps, you can simply run this command to open up your new YaST SSHD Configuration Tool:

sudo /sbin/yast2 sshd

or just

/sbin/yast2 sshd

After that, YaST opens up a Read dialog with a progress bar and after the configuration is read, it automatically switches to the Configuration dialog which looks like this one:

Watching YaST Logs

NOTE: It is very useful to watch the log files while developing and testing any YaST module or its part. You can do it as root with this command in some terminal: /usr/bin/tail -F /var/log/YaST2/y2log