[ipxe-devel] Entering String in menu-context possible?

[Andrew Bobulsky]

On Apr 15, 2013, at 9:28 AM, Michael Brown <mbrown at fensystems.co.uk> wrote:

> On 15/04/13 08:48, Leo Baltus wrote:
>> Just a thought: would it make sense to have some sort of framework that
>> allows several fields to be editted just like config and login and have
>> config and login use that so that 'edit' could benefit from it too.
>>
>> I think it would be cool to be able to edit a few variables in one 'edit'
>> session so you could visually edit for instance both kernel, initrd, and
>> command-line options.
>
> That's almost exactly why I'm wary of adding this feature: people will expect that ability.

That's a very valid concern, and it only grows more valid if any new
features are hidden behind a compile-time flag that defaults to #undef
(or however that works :P).

> Unfortunately, that wouldn't help in terms of byte count.  "config" and "login" already share the framework for edit boxes, which is abstracted out into editbox.c; there's no viable way I can see to share more code between these.
>
> I'm happy to add an "edit" command which will create a single horizontally-scrollable edit box, which can be exited only via Enter, Ctrl-C, or Escape.  If this isn't going to be sufficient, then I'd rather not add the feature at all, and leave "read" as the only way to prompt the user for input.
>
> Michael

That may actually be the best compromise... I'd suggest a switch like
"--hidetext" or "--password" in case people want to prompt for
sensitive information in a way that the login command doesn't properly
facilitate.

The ideal thing would be, of course, a custom "config" menu with a
user-defined set of variables, but I seem to recall that *that* is
specifically not facilitated by the current code structure... Hence
this discussion for alternatives, right?

If not, I've got some ideas for command syntax that you'd probably like :)

Cheers,
Andrew