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Date:      Sat, 17 Feb 2001 11:46:37 -0800
From:      Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
To:        Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
Cc:        Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>, arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Moving Things [was Re: List of things to move from main tree] 
Message-ID:  <6905.982439197@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
In-Reply-To: Message from Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>  of "Sat, 17 Feb 2001 03:21:58 PST." <20010217032158.A85153@mollari.cthul.hu> 

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> Well, currently the installer does impose policy by virtue of the
> source components being in one menu and the ports in another, with
> all of the "src-like" bits like 44bsd-more, 44bsd-csh, etc, jumbled in
> amongst the crap like GNOME and four million versions of breakout.  So

Again, this isn't the installer at work.  Those components are
*already* broken out into separate pieces and all the installer does
is reflect the existing status quo.  Sure, I could have tried to paper
over the differences by having the installer invoke the appropriate
installation magic behind the users back and create the illusion of a
unified front, but we're talking about a lot of work to maintain an
illusion which only collapses the minute the user starts thinking
about updating those components anyway.

> That might be one way to go, but it's clear to me that any change
> needs to become manifest in sysinstall, being the interface to
> installing the various bits of software, and the rest will attend to
> itself.

I really think you're conceptualizing this backwards. :)

> The most obvious way to handle this (not requiring any fancy XML ports
> tree rearchitecturing) would be to just rip out the sysinstall code
> which treats distributions separately and rewrite it to use packages.

Perhaps obvious, but not correct.  The reason sysinstall hasn't used
packages for the base system all along is due to the temporary space
requirements of packages.  The extraction technique used by pkg_add
was always aimed at small stuff (a bad design I've already described
and lambasted more than once in this forum) and there's just not
enough room to have "base" transit through /tmp or even /usr/tmp
first.  Go UTSL for pkg_add if you don't believe me. :)

> There is nothing preventing us from installing the base system as
> packages right now, except that sysinstall demands those bits to be
> distributions.

I wish that were true. :( However, even that would only be a stop-gap
measure since we're still looking for something which incorporates
sources, binary packages and "distributions" into one unified design
here.  What you and Marc are proposing doesn't represent the true
goal, it's just another step along the "hack it some more" path and
I'd like to get off that one now.

- Jordan


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