[OpenWrt-Devel] openwrt/packages: [RFC] Proposed flattening of menuconfig menus

[Daniel F. Dickinson]

On 2018-08-13 06:19 AM, Karl Palsson wrote:
> 
> "Daniel F. Dickinson" <cshored at thecshore.com> wrote:
>> Posting on list as I think the discussion should include as
>> folks as possible in the discussion.
>>
>> https://github.com/openwrt/packages/issues/6745
>>
>>> Especially when getting started with OpenWrt finding things in menuconfig is complicated by the second level menus that are sometimes used and sometimes not, even when the category exists.
>>>
>>> Further not everything fits neatly in a category.
>>>
>>> Finally when, years ago, I tried to improve the situation the above resulted in titles that I think make it harder to find things (in retrospect).
>>>
>>> Therefore I would like to do a mass removal of the second-level menus, leaving only the broad top-level categories like 'net', and 'utlitiies'.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
> 
> I agree that the earlier attempts at adding more categories was
> probably unhelpful, and just required more places to try checking
> for things. I think there's still room for _some_ second level
> menus (all of the iotivity stuff is fine in it's own menu for
> instance) , but they would need to have a "maintainer" of sorts,

Yeah, it's not *all* bad...

> to try and sheperd new packages into that menu. You're only
> talking about the net/utilities/libraries trees right?
> luci/languages/kernel are all well maintained.

Ah thank you for reminding of that, it's a good point.

> 
> What I honestly think is the biggest missing thing sometimes is
> proper package descriptions.
> 
> I'd support undoing many of the nestings that were done,
> especially under networking. Especially the vague ones like "file
> transfer" and "bit torrent" and "download managers" and the
> "routing" ""vpn" "wwan" "firewall tunnel

Hmmmm....well it's more work, but I think a better solution would be do
do a better job of defining the second level.

In most cases I think my efforts at the second level tried too hard to
keep the number of second level menus low, resulting in vague/confusing
terminology.

I wonder if there are 4-5 categories (plus certain specialty labels like
iotivity and a 'vpn' (and only vpn) category) that can be used as a way
to make looking for net and utilities (especially) more manageable
(libraries I'm  still thinking more of just flat because their purpose
is to support other package rather than to exist for their own sake),
without ending up with an overly large number of submenus (which I think
is more detrimental than helpful).

Regards,

Daniel

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