There are existing projects that are trying to do this. However the best of them have not taken off yet. The combination of the SBLIM, Config4GNU, Gnome System Tools, and Webmin seems the best.

I believe a good demo of a configuring tool for a single system service or application could bring together the GST and Webmin developers, along with some documentation projects. I hope this demo and documentation would be a catalyst that create a fully implemented configuration and documentation system for linux.

The best demo would include

• a GST like UI for an existing GST Tool.
• a Webmin like UI for the same GST Tool (webmin covers all of GST tools, I think)
• use of an existing documentation projects doc files to provide context help, and a schema of the config file.
• use of config4GNUs parser system.
• have a provider for the CIM Schema for the same tool
• the GST like UI could be a plugin to the existing SRI java application of the SBLIM project.

The possible GST tools are:

• Users and groups
• Date and time
• Network configuration
• Bootloaders
• Runlevels

The users and groups, and bootloaders are probably the most likely canidates.
However the best example for the documentation groups would probably be apache, or Xorg.

So it seems I would need to either pick two tools, or just do apache.

The next problem is doing a web version of this. The SRI java tool should make an desktop application easy, but I don't think there is a web version of SRI.

Using the documentation of apache for the schema and context help should be easy. Using config4GNU parser should also be easier because it is already written. There also seems to be generic providers from some CIM Schema objects, coming from the C4G parsers. So this would just have to be customized.

So the hard parts are:

• web version
• GST like UI if apache is picked
• If I do a distribution dependent tool then the parsers and will be difficult.

Plan

1. pick a tool or set of tools
2. look at how it is handled by GST, WebMin, CIM Schema
3. plan out a block of time to work on implementing it.
4. build up documentation compairing this implementation to GST and WebMin.
5. contribute new pieces to SRI, Config4GNU