Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 09:49:21 -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: <51A4C3F1.2010604@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <51A4343F.3070605@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> <51A40E37.9060702@freebsd.org> <51A4343F.3070605@mu.org>
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On 05/27/13 23:36, Alfred Perlstein wrote: > On 5/27/13 6:53 PM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote: >> 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 > > I'm sure if there was a list of reasonable things, such as wireless > then pc-sysinstall could be augmented. This is the first I've heard > of that. All the other complaints have been based on portability. > > Is that all that is required now, wireless? There are more, as well. A partial list of missing features on both sides is here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/PCBSDInstallMerge. Other major ones are IPv6 (maybe this has changed?) and no jail setup feature. Most of the existing disk partitioning code in pc-sysinstall, which is the only thing in a FreeBSD installer that is at all complicated, is also *extremely* fragile and needs in all likelihood to be entirely replaced. The merge effort stalled because of this kind of issue -- doing a "merge" rapidly became rewriting both from scratch. -Nathan
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