From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 29 15:31:03 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 169AF106566B; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:31:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jhb@freebsd.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DFA138FC12; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:31:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bigwig.baldwin.cx (bigwig.baldwin.cx [96.47.65.170]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 9641646B3F; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:31:02 -0500 (EST) Received: from jhbbsd.localnet (unknown [209.249.190.124]) by bigwig.baldwin.cx (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 1C449B960; Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:31:02 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:52:06 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.13.5 (FreeBSD/8.2-CBSD-20110714-p8; KDE/4.5.5; amd64; ; ) References: <4EF904F2.4020109@FreeBSD.org> <4EFA1C9C.60601@FreeBSD.org> <4EFA7FD4.10600@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <4EFA7FD4.10600@freebsd.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201112290952.06834.jhb@freebsd.org> X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (bigwig.baldwin.cx); Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:31:02 -0500 (EST) Cc: Lawrence Stewart , Doug Barton , Ron McDowell Subject: Re: Removal of sysinstall from HEAD and lack of a post-install configuration tool X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:31:03 -0000 On Tuesday, December 27, 2011 9:32:52 pm Lawrence Stewart wrote: > On 12/28/11 06:29, Doug Barton wrote: > > On 12/27/2011 03:48, Lawrence Stewart wrote: > >> On the topic of Doug's actual question, I see minimal sense in > >> resurrecting sysinstall in head now. I would suggest it be done much > >> closer to (say, 6 months before) the 10.0 release cycle, if no suitable > >> post-installation configuration tool has materialised. > > > > My concern about that approach is that 9.0 hasn't even been released yet > > and we've already seen changes that are going to make it hard to > > resurrect sysinstall if that's the decision we come to. Waiting another > > year or 2 would make it impossible. > > Which changes are you referring to? I would have thought a reverse merge > to undo the deletion of the sysinstall and old libdialog sources would > be very minimal work. We'd also probably need a few extra build system > changes to make sure old libdialog is perhaps statically compiled into > sysinstall as it would be the only in-tree consumer, but that's not hard > either. I may be lacking some imagination, but don't really see why it > would become harder the longer we wait. I think Doug is worried that the list will just get longer, and I agree. Bits rot faster once they aren't part of the build. It is easy to delete sysinstall or trim it, it is not easy to resurrect it. Personally, the one time I used bsdinstall recently I found it to be a bit uneven, and not really a step forward for a new user compared to the "standard" install mode of sysinstall. It's biggest win is it's ability to do more disk configurations, but it seemed less user-friendly in almost every other regard (and even the disk editor seemd less user-friendly even if it had more functionality). -- John Baldwin