Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 20:53:59 -0500 From: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> To: Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org> Cc: Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD installers and future direction Message-ID: <51A40E37.9060702@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <51A40AF2.2010108@mu.org> References: <51A0DC3F.9030301@cran.org.uk> <CAK6u07WDZrWU4dnrBzQGYf%2BpbmibK7KxSUZyvie8jJQ1SMODuw@mail.gmail.com> <51A1025A.2020607@cran.org.uk> <51A14445.4060305@freebsd.org> <51A15EDF.6050600@erdgeist.org> <CA%2BWntOtrgkstTOamTZh9_FvATd8a55ca9hCUFF1sE=2zSd4EQA@mail.gmail.com> <13CA24D6AB415D428143D44749F57D7201F5B337@ltcfiswmsgmb26> <51A38051.8040909@mu.org> <51A39039.1070202@cran.org.uk> <51A39FEC.5070402@mu.org> <51A3A891.5060103@cran.org.uk> <51A3C202.9030802@mu.org> <51A3CEB6.3070200@cran.org.uk> <51A40AF2.2010108@mu.org>
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On 05/27/13 20:40, Alfred Perlstein wrote: > On 5/27/13 2:23 PM, Bruce Cran wrote: >> On 27/05/2013 21:28, Alfred Perlstein wrote: >>> On 5/27/13 11:40 AM, Bruce Cran wrote: >>>> Yes. >>> Is this a joke? >> >> It probably /was/ too short a reply. Personally I think there should >> be a single UI and scripting interface across all platforms. We >> should try and get pc-sysinstall running on all of them first in case >> there's some problem that means it can't be done, in which case we'd >> need to use a different backend. >> > > There are just going to be certain platforms that make it EASY to do > cool things. We should embrace that! That's why there are different > platforms! > > Some are great for low power, others are great for graphics, cpu > power, gpu, networking etc. > > If we always go for the lowest common denominator then we are > crippling all the platforms for no one's benefit. Even if something > CAN be done, if it is very difficult, or just never happening, then we > can't limit everyone's experience based on the more difficult and/or > resource strapped platforms. > > It's just not good business. Yes, and all of this cuts both ways: pc-sysinstall has no wireless setup support, for instance. Right now we support what we support because it is the most feature-complete thing we have, not just on tier-2 platforms but also on x86. To bring this discussion back to the ground, the fact is that we lack an installer that has both internal support for ZFS and a UI. One of the reasons for this is that making a good expressive UI for ZFS is a non-trivial undertaking given its enormous flexibility. The bsdinstall partition editor has been written to be extensible for this, and several people have started writing code to do it, but no one ended up having time to finish. Probably a reasonable thing to do is to start with supporting only a minimal set of features. If anyone felt like actually writing this code, I'm sure it would be appreciated by all and be more productive than email exchanges. -Nathan
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