1 |
Than-you very much for the up-to-date progress. Congratulations for all the |
2 |
hard work done up to now.I look forwards your release. Anything good to make |
3 |
Gentoo installation easier for more people. |
4 |
|
5 |
On 10/17/06, Preston Cody <codeman@g.o> wrote: |
6 |
> |
7 |
> Greetings and salutations, |
8 |
> In GLI's 2.5 years or so of existence, we have achieved almost all of |
9 |
> the goals of the project. The first main goal of GLI was to make a |
10 |
> fully automated installation program that would work off of profiles, |
11 |
> be non-interactive, and architecture-generic. The other main goal was |
12 |
> to make an installer that could be used by end users for their |
13 |
> desktops without having to know XML and with pretty, easy-to-use |
14 |
> frontends that would help boost the reputation of Gentoo as not just a |
15 |
> super-l33t distro. |
16 |
> |
17 |
> We have struggled and faught hard to achieve both goals at the same |
18 |
> time, but alas they are simply too different to be able to handle both |
19 |
> and do a *good job* at both. |
20 |
> The main problem, as was to be expected, is partitioning. Andrew |
21 |
> Gaffney has spent ages working on trying to support every insaine and |
22 |
> idiotic combination of partitions that users try to create, but there |
23 |
> are millions of combinations and the simple truth is we can't do it |
24 |
> right for everyone, and we're tired of the endless stream of people |
25 |
> complaining why their drive with 6 primaries isn't being supported. |
26 |
> Also, with the current partitioning, it is extremely hard to support |
27 |
> raid or lvm or other architectures in general for that matter. |
28 |
> |
29 |
> After seeing the simplicity and ease of Quickstart, the solution |
30 |
> became clear: admit failure and split/branch GLI. So here's the plan: |
31 |
> |
32 |
> Quickstart will become the primary method for automated installations. |
33 |
> It is designed to be able to be netbooted and will be the installer |
34 |
> integrated into Scire. It may also be added to the minimal livecd at |
35 |
> some point (why not, right?). Quickstart works with blank drives |
36 |
> only, and is not too user-friendly. Currently no frontend or |
37 |
> configurator exists though I have plans for a web-based one that will |
38 |
> plug in to Scire nicely. |
39 |
> |
40 |
> GLI will be refactored to become slightly more interactive. There |
41 |
> will probably be about four main steps/stopping points/actions that |
42 |
> will occur. |
43 |
> 1. Setup networking, logfiles, chroot_dir and such.. i.e. all the |
44 |
> client_configuration stuff. This already is done interactively from |
45 |
> the two main frontends. We can thus chuck the entire client_profile |
46 |
> (yea!!!!) |
47 |
> 2. Drop to cfdisk or diskdruid to let the user do partitioning and |
48 |
> probably filesystem formatting too. This lets the user deal with |
49 |
> partitioning themselves and thus we don't get the blame when they |
50 |
> screw it up! :) |
51 |
> 3. Define mountpoints.. these will replace the partition layout in the |
52 |
> install profile. Then we fetch/install the stage tarball and/or |
53 |
> portage. We will still keep the dynamic stage3 (as well as making |
54 |
> command-line tools for its use), because the installer-livecd isn't |
55 |
> changing. Having this step separate lets us choose profiles and |
56 |
> gather updated info about things like USE flags. |
57 |
> 4. Everything else. There really isn't much benefit to separate out |
58 |
> the rest of the steps. We'll let people drop to a shell to make their |
59 |
> own kernel config, but I don't see much beyond that and I still like |
60 |
> the ability to configure at once and then let it go for a while. |
61 |
> |
62 |
> These changes will drastically simplify the partitioning code and make |
63 |
> GLI much easier to port to other architectures. |
64 |
> |
65 |
> The plan is to release a version of GLI like it is now with bugfixes |
66 |
> only for 2007.0 and target the new GLI (god forbid, should we call it |
67 |
> GLI 2.0? <cringe>) for 2007.1. If enough progress has been made, we |
68 |
> can try to put an experimental copy on the livecd and hide it (doesn't |
69 |
> make much sence to have an entirely different /experimental livecd |
70 |
> just for that). The new GLI will be written first and foremost with |
71 |
> gli-dialog as the frontend. The GTK frontend is quite bloated and a |
72 |
> pain to change and maintain, so it may disappear entirely and that is |
73 |
> ok by the installer devs. |
74 |
> |
75 |
> That's about it, if you have any questions/comments, feel free to post |
76 |
> them. This list has like no traffic so it could use some discussion |
77 |
> every once and awhile. |
78 |
> Have a pleasant day, |
79 |
> |
80 |
> -Codeman |
81 |
> -Installer Project Co-Lead. |
82 |
> -- |
83 |
> gentoo-installer@g.o mailing list |
84 |
> |
85 |
> |
86 |
|
87 |
|
88 |
-- |
89 |
Andrew |