Date: 15 Feb 1998 16:35:33 +0100 From: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan Smørgrav) To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: freebsd-install@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Questions to the gurus :) Message-ID: <xzpu3a0zxru.fsf@hrotti.ifi.uio.no> In-Reply-To: "Jordan K. Hubbard"'s message of "Fri, 13 Feb 1998 09:30:20 -0800" References: <7780.887391020@time.cdrom.com>
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"Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> 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:
<brainstorm>
[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 =[
...
]
</brainstorm>
> > 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)
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