From owner-freebsd-install Sun Feb 15 07:35:40 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id HAA17693 for freebsd-install-outgoing; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 07:35:40 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-install@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ifi.uio.no (0@ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA17687 for ; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 07:35:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dag-erli@ifi.uio.no) Received: from hrotti.ifi.uio.no (2602@hrotti.ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.15]) by ifi.uio.no (8.8.8/8.8.7/ifi0.2) with ESMTP id QAA09322; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 16:35:34 +0100 (MET) Received: (from dag-erli@localhost) by hrotti.ifi.uio.no ; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 16:35:34 +0100 (MET) To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Cc: freebsd-install@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Questions to the gurus :) References: <7780.887391020@time.cdrom.com> Organization: Gutteklubben Terrasse X-url: http://www.ifi.uio.no/~dag-erli/ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan Smørgrav) Date: 15 Feb 1998 16:35:33 +0100 In-Reply-To: "Jordan K. Hubbard"'s message of "Fri, 13 Feb 1998 09:30:20 -0800" Message-ID: Lines: 98 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 19.34 Sender: owner-freebsd-install@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org "Jordan K. Hubbard" writes: > > On the functional side, I'm thinking about a system of .inf files > > which specify the name, location and size of each distribution, as > > well as the long description, dependencies etc. (hmmm... perhaps we > > could even use the pkg format for the distributions...) With some > > Sort of - you can't afford the temp space to make them *actual* > packages or I'd have done this already. :-) Also, you'd be amazed at > how much info is in the already-existing foo.mtree files that > accompany every distribution. I've always thought that I should write > a function which groked mtree files so that sysinstall could just > slurp them in along with the .inf files and derive a complex "packing > list" from the info therein. Things like long and short descriptions > could go in the existing .inf files = you can have attributes with I was thinking of putting distribution descriptions etc. into the .inf files and having sysinstall scan for them at runtime rather than hardcoding the distribution list into sysinstall. Something like this: [3.14-RELEASE.inf] dist = 3.14-RELEASE name = FreeBSD 3.14-RELEASE longname ={ This is FreeBSD 3.14-RELEASE, the latest release along the 3-STABLE branch. } packages =[ bin/bin.inf catpages/catpages.inf ... src/subin.inf src/susbin.inf ] where the =[ ... ] syntax indicates a list of newline-separated values for the attribute, rather than a single multiline value. Perhaps we can assign identifiers to each distribution: packages ={ p_bin p_catpages ... p_subin p_susbin } and then: p_bin = bin/bin.inf p_catpages = catpages/catpages.inf ... p_subin = src/subin.inf p_susbin = src/susbin.inf The .inf file for each distribution can contain dependency information when necessary. The main .inf file could also contain a list of suggested installations, such as the User / X-User / Developer / Kernel developer / etc. menu in the current sysinstall. suggest = 3 suggest1 =[ minimal Minimal functional installation bin/bin.inf ] suggest2 =[ ... ] > > Same goes for support for serial consoles of varying arcanity > > (arcaneness? sp?) - I think sysinstall should support as many > > terminals as possible (headless > Just don't break vt100 support or add any evil assumptions about running > on a VTY and you should be OK. :) I noticed that the current sysinstall code spends quite some time making sure it is (or isn't) running on a VTY. This is something I'm going to have to read closely (or just rip out). > > Is libdialog a big win, or is it OK to code directly against > > libncurses? > Whichever makes you happier - both approaches can be said to suck, > just in different ways. :-) libdialog has some bugs in which menus get screwed up under certain circumstances (or perhaps there is a bug in the way sysinstall uses them). I'll have to take some time to RTFM for libdialog... -- DES (dag-erli@ifi.uio.no) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-install" in the body of the message