Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Jeremy Blosser <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>]

On Feb 07, Eric Sandall [eric AT sandall.us] wrote:
> On Wednesday 07 February 2007 16:18:40 Karsten Behrmann wrote:
> > People would be told which config files they need to edit instead of what
> > we currently have with e.g. the "choose preferred editor" menu item. 
> > Again,
> > this shows them how they'll need to make such adjustments later on. It'll
> > also make us document our config files better, which is a Good Thing.
> >
> > I'm open for suggestions though, so if you think this is a horrible idea,
> > feel free to jump into #sourcemage-cauldron and yell at us, or send me an
> > email.
> 
> If you're saying we won't have a guided installer that actually *does* the 
> steps, then yes, this is a *horrible* idea. ;) This would be akin to 
> Gentoo's 
> installer with their instruction page printed out, which I hate (I've 
> installed two now (on my SPARCs)).
> 
> I like the idea of actually doing the steps for them (as our current
> installer does), but *also* providing instructions (again, our current
> installer does this, though the instructions may be outdated) and a shell
> (we currently do this as well ;)) for those who like to do their own.

I think having a guided menu installer that does the steps is Nice To Have,
but the baseline should be the chroot+kernel+shell+a checklist so they
don't forget to do things.  Yes this is how Gentoo does it, but we
typically expect even more of our users than they do.  It's rather ironic
to me that on the install process at least they let the user be closer to
the system than we do.  The usual response to this is 'do a chroot
install', but several experienced users have tried this lately and found
it's not as workable as it should be.  morfic can tell stories of getting
64bit working, and it's worth noting his final approach was a new install
image was a simple chroot that quite a few are now using.

Yes, it's good to have both, but we need to invert the priority and get the
basics working first.  We provide a shell on the ISO now but doing the
installer steps manually from there doesn't really work completely.
Between that and the simple fact that what we have now is keeping us from
putting out ISO updates, I'm all for rolling it back to simpler for now.
We can add the other menu bits back in later if people want them and if it
doesn't affect the baseline installer's ability to be regenerated as
quickly as a stable tarball can be today.

This is another place where we've been trying for a few *years* to
accomplish something that is admittedly cool but that we aren't keeping up
with, and it's giving us black eyes.  I've asked the guys in -cauldron to
get us something *this month* that can be kept up-to-date with the grimoire
release process, and this is part of what they've come back with.  If this
is what it takes I think it's what we need to do.  It doesn't hurt that as
a user I do *prefer* this less-guided approach, but I'm first being
pragmatic: whatever basic thing gets us there first, we should do first.

Of course, the alternative of pushing what we have into something that
reproducible as quickly does exist -- but only if more hands come over and
make it happen.  I don't think we're there... the grimoire releases already
smell like they're stalling again.  :-(

PS: BTW if we go with a more textual install we need to make sure we get
some Zork in there.  :-)

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