Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 13:29:00 +0100 From: "Devon H. O'Dell" <dodell@sitetronics.com> To: Jose M Rodriguez <josemi@freebsd.jazztel.es> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: My project wish-list for the next 12 months Message-ID: <41B05C0C.9050503@sitetronics.com> In-Reply-To: <200412031152.32859.freebsd@redesjm.local> References: <41AE3F80.1000506@freebsd.org> <41AE6E98.1070202@telus.net> <200412031152.32859.freebsd@redesjm.local>
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Jose M Rodriguez wrote: > El Jueves, 2 de Diciembre de 2004 02:23, Peter Kieser escribió: > >>Scott Long wrote: >> >>>2. New installer. I know some people still consider this a joke, >>>but the reality is that sysinstall is no longer state of the art. >>>It's fairly good at the simple task that it does, but it's becoming >>>harder and harder to fix bugs and extend functionality in it. It's >>>also fairly unfriendly to those of us who haven't been using it >>>since 1995. The DFly folks have some very interesting work in this >>>area (www.bsdinstaller.com) and it would be very good to see if we >>>can collaborate with them on it. >> >>Please, don't change /stand/sysinstall *too* much, there is really >>nothing wrong with the interface of it, and it's what makes FreeBSD >>so "quick" to install. At the very least, make sure you do NOT go for >>an XFree86 installation, and keep to the "KISS" approach. Visually >>wise, theres nothing wrong with the current installer.. and its one >>of the things I "promote" about FreeBSD -- the ease to install. It's >>small, its fast.. and it works, however in error situations it does >>mess up badly. > > > I second that. It's the biggest thing we can put in a floppy. > > But, if works on a new installer are needed, this must be neccesary: > > sysinstall is only the most user related thing of and overall process. > I think this must begin with taking /usr/src/release out of /usr/src > and work on a new release build system. > > Also, I can remenber, al last, other previous try. Please, use a safe > path. As a reference, Mandrake Drakx is accesible via cvs (but gpl). > > http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/drakx.php3 > > As anaconda (which use python instead of perl) is an installer working > from a system interpreter in a big mdfs. works over perlgtk2 and a vesa > X server. This may be used in FreeBSD for cdrom/pxe installs Anaconda is also GPLed and also requires a good few changes for most of it to run under FreeBSD. I haven't made any of these changes, but we looked into using Anaconda in DragonFly before we started on our own installer, and it would have just been too much work for the deadline we had (our 1.0 installer was written in less than 3 months!). Yes, it is in Python, but all the VESA stuff is via framebuffer, not an X server, so it's not something that we could use easily. At least, this was the case when I researched it in May. Anything GPL probably won't qualify in the first place, due to obvious license incompatibilities. While I don't want to sound shameless, I do urge you who are used to sysinstall to take a look at our installer -- http://www.bsdinstaller.org. It's very simple to extend, and it's not very large. I haven't looked at Drakx at all, so I can't say anything useful about that. HTH, Devon H. O'Dell
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