Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 09:30:20 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan Sm rgrav) Cc: freebsd-install@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Questions to the gurus :) Message-ID: <7780.887391020@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "13 Feb 1998 17:18:29 %2B0100." <xzplnvf7a22.fsf@hrotti.ifi.uio.no>
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> 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
newlines easily just by saying:
long_descr={
this is
a long description which will
be folded into a single string with newlines
by release/sysinstall/attrs.c :)
}
> I'm also thinking about moving more of the dirty work out of the
> installer and into backends. I haven't RTFS very closely, but I did
> notice that ftp is implemented directly into sysinstall. How much
It used to be, but not anymore. It's actually just calling libftpio
for all its services - you'd be reinventing the wheel. That's also
the same library fetch() calls, though it implements http xfers
internally. Not *too* much call for those in sysinstall (yet),
fortunately.
> I also have some concerns about the interface. Previous versions of
> sysinstall are rumoured to work well with screen readers, and that's a
> feature I feel I should keep, but I have no idea of how these
> thingumabobs work.
I think as long as you move the cursor sanely, you're OK. Max
could tell you more, obviously.
> 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. :)
> How concerned should I be about screen size? Can I safely assume no
> resizing will take place? Can I safely assume that the screen will be
> at least 60 columns wide, and at least 15 or 20 lines tall?
Both safe assumptions.
> 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. :-)
Jordan
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