Title: Members' Experiences

LUCI by Jerome Sautret is a Python program, available as a package in many Linux distributions that edits configuration files using a GTK-based dialogue box to ask for the settings. The dialogue box is describable with a script, and the default settings are taken from the existing configuration file. Configuration files that set environment variables (such as bash_profile) are supported, and there are example description scripts to get you going.

I found LUCI interesting because of its potential for acting as a "nice" user interface for shell scripts and other short programs. The shell script can write out a dialogue description file and create the default environment settings file, call LUCI to let the user change the latter, and then source it to set the environment variables to the user's preferences (if the file is kept then the preferences will be "sticky".) LUCI was not designed for this and there is a flaw in doing this with the current version: LUCI does not return an exit code, so the calling program cannot tell whether the user pressed OK or Cancel. Aside from that, though, LUCI can be useful for those times when you have to quickly write code for someone who likes dialogue boxes.