Help to design an arbitrary ebuild signature

[spica]

Please help me to design a user interface for a fork of `net-wireless/wireless-regdb` that will allow users to provide parameters in an arbitrary form. Users need to be able to modify band settings per particular country code and band.

Example: A user needs to change
FROM `(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (20)`
TO `(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (36)`
FOR `country US`

`5150 - 5250` is a band - this is a key
`80` - channel width - this is a value
`36` - is a power of radiation - this is a value

How users to provide this information to portage?

this is an example of the file to be modified:

[flexibeast]

Off the top of my head, and from a purely technical point of view, you could possibly prompt for user input during the `configure` phase, via the `read` shell builtin - presumably doing validation to only accept valid inputs - and during that same phase, use sed(1) to make the appropriate changes to the relevant source file. (And are there formally 'valid' inputs that might nevertheless cause certain hardware to break?)

The wisdom and/or legality of doing this is another matter.

[Hu]

If the format of the input is not constrained, I suggest using /etc/portage/patches to apply a unified diff to the data file(s). This avoids the need to write a new interface and its parser, and delegates the work back to patch, which is a well understood format with good tooling support.

[Genone]

What is the purpose of this interface? As this is a regulatory database it doesn't look right to allow the user to make arbitrary changes.

Also any changes would break the signature verification of the database, is that what your title is about?

[spica]