From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 9 21:22:27 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from math.psu.edu (leibniz.math.psu.edu [146.186.130.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B1B0537B43E for ; Mon, 9 Jul 2001 21:22:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cross@math.psu.edu) Received: from augusta.math.psu.edu (augusta.math.psu.edu [146.186.132.2]) by math.psu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA16820; Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:22:10 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <200107100422.AAA16820@math.psu.edu> To: Wes Peters Cc: tlambert2@mindspring.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 09 Jul 2001 21:59:24 MDT." <3B4A7D9C.A64230D9@softweyr.com> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:22:10 -0400 From: Dan Cross Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > The main problem with sysinstall all along has been that it is a one-off > program. There is no glitz in writing installers, and they're only used > once, then rarely if ever again. The real solution is to define a little language for such maintenance tasks, and using that as the basis for installation packaging; something along the lines of Inferno's mush(1), which incorporate's mk-like dependency graph manipulation rules into a shell. This would make it easy to cleanly and elegantly automate all sorts of system tasks; from updating configuration files from a common repository, to installing or upgrading the base system. It could also form the basis of something like Sun's jumpstart for FreeBSD. Instead, we have as you say a one-off program specialized to do the task, but in a non-extensible, and non-flexible way. - Dan C. (Please direct flames to /dev/null.) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message