Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 16:27:39 -0400 From: Allen Landsidel <landsidel.allen@gmail.com> To: dteske@FreeBSD.org, 'Randi Harper' <randi@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-sysinstall@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bin/164281: bsdinstall(8): please allow sysinstall as installer option Message-ID: <5358223B.1090408@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <012501cf5f1f$c5e7c740$51b755c0$@FreeBSD.org> References: <201404151630.s3FGU0Zg026166@freefall.freebsd.org> <CAM9wqY8Bn9yQvMbpMdg1wcVhx5AGgK6rP1tkh9qccDhWZaU9Kw@mail.gmail.com> <012501cf5f1f$c5e7c740$51b755c0$@FreeBSD.org>
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On 4/23/2014 14:13, dteske@FreeBSD.org wrote: > As I continue the lay the ground-work for a bsdinstall that is superior > to sysinstall, do I split my time amongst that task and provision a new > task of migrating sysinstall toward resurrection with the afore- > mentioned fixes? I think it depends on whichever path gets us to a 'nice' installer the quickest. The end result should be the same and I can't see how it matters which one is used as a base. Splitting coding time between the two just sounds silly unless the goal is to keep both alive indefinitely. My gut says to start with sysinstall and refactor it to abstract out interfaces to the stuff that needs replaced, then do the underlying replacement. I only say this because getting 100% feature coverage (and testing of those features) into bsdinstall is going to be pretty labor intensive vs. refactoring sysinstall and leaving all the features in place. Of course that undermines all the work you've already done on bsdinstall. The UX is one of the things that's really terrible in bsdinstall vs. sysinstall, and if that's libdialogs fault, I'm skeptical that this is the right path to begin with. A simple example is the disk partitioning interface, which seems to have taken a step backwards even in bsdinstall itself from FreeBSD 9 to 10. The break between when you use the tab key vs. arrow keys is obnoxious. For that matter, so is the removal of the historical default partitioning scheme for a new linuxy "one big root" default, but I'm getting a bit off topic and may even predate bsdinstall. I can't remember. > So to help answer the question of prioritization (given that demand > still exists for sysinstall), I think the best way to guide us is a Wiki. > > I recommend that we develop a f.o Wiki that we can all edit to > contain our partiticular misgiving of bsdinstall versus sysinstall. It's worth a shot. If you want to set it up, send a link and I'll find some time to rant into it. > That being said... with respect to the actual PR of bringing back sysinstall > as an option... I'm not against it. In fact, seeing that someone posted on > the PR to check-up on me, I think it's time (once 9.3 comes out) to roll a > new Druid disk. For those that don't know... I serve sysinstall based media > from druidbsd.sf.net for 9.x releases (albeit I haven't cut one since 9.0). I didn't realize that was you. I used druid for all my 9.x installs and the only reason I responded to the PR is because there wasn't one for 10.0, and when I installed it, I was seeing red over bsdinstall all over again. I'd forgotten about it entirely until being confronted with it again. > I'll make sure to cut one for 9.3 so that people wanting sysinstall can not > only have it, but can have the one I developed for $work which has many > MANY enhancements -- *cough* including the ability to install from a USB > thumb drive *cough*. (smiles) Very nice. I'm in a fully virtualized environment, so once I get a base system set up, I just clone it repeatedly and make changes to that. This means I rarely am reminded of the user-unfriendly fiasco that installing FreeBSD has become. Sysinstall was of course nice for other reasons, not least of which was a quick way to look for ports without digging through the freebsd.org web interface or make find+grep etc.
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