Gentoo Archives: gentoo-installer

From: Scott Hadfield <shadfiel@×××.ca>
To: gentoo-installer@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-installer] Why not GLIS?
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 06:29:10
Message-Id: 40593EE0.10504@sfu.ca
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-installer] Why not GLIS? by Eric Sammer
1 Eric Sammer wrote:
2
3 > Short answer is that it doesn't cover all the features users want.
4 > (Remember we're talking about users, not just ourselves, etc.)
5
6 It doesn't cover ALL of the features, but it does cover a lot of them.
7 Just briefly reviewing over the initial specifications:
8 * Multiple front ends - Definately
9 * Reusible back end framework - Sort of, but arguably not.
10 * Automated deployement - Definately
11 * Dry run profile generation - Yes
12 * Full support for all Gentoo architectures - I doubt it. And it
13 definately hasn't been tested on much more than x86
14 * Specialized profiles - Possible, but no one's done any work to create any.
15 * Open policies and standards use - No, not really.
16 * Integration with future configuration projects - No.
17
18 As far as design goes, GLIS is fairly similar to what is specified (at
19 least as far as my untrained eyes can tell).
20
21 >> It even seems to me that an initial goal of GLI is to get to the
22 >> point where GLIS is at right now, i.e. working, based on a
23 >> configuration file, and highly flexible.
24 >
25 > It's coincidence. The reason it's being rebuilt is because the
26 > architecture had to change to accommodate the required features.
27
28 Probably not coincidence, probably just good practice if you want to
29 write a serious installer. :-)
30
31 >> GLIS is written in bash and made up of about 8 small bash scripts
32 >> (except for the partition code, which is way too big for bash), and
33 >> in my opinion this is really all you need for a gentoo installer
34 >> since all it takes to install gentoo is a few bash commands.
35 >
36 > And while it's good that something such as that works for you, there's
37 > somewhere around 250,000 - 500,000 gentoo users out there (last I
38 > heard) that this doesn't work for. If it did, they wouldn't be asking
39 > for something else.
40
41 While, a few bash commands do work for me, but in my next sentence I
42 said that "GLIS simply takes those commands and puts them into scripts."
43 Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most of the 250-500 thousand potential
44 gentoo user's would be willing to type in ./glis to get gentoo
45 installed, and the rest would be willing to wait for a GUI. Of course
46 most of those people wouldn't be willing to sit down and take two hours
47 or so editing the glis config file the first time they do it. And a good
48 interface to the config file would be a must if glis was going to be
49 taken seriously.
50
51 >> I've followed this installer project from its beginning in January,
52 >
53 > This may come off wrong, but if you've been following it since its
54 > beginning, the differences in goals between GLIS and the GLI should be
55 > clear, as should the need for the GLI.
56
57 This is partially the main reason I wrote this email now, and not in
58 January. Perhaps I just need it spelled out for me. As I said
59 previously, to install gentoo takes a few bash commands, these commands
60 would fit ideally into a bash script. There's a few areas that this idea
61 fails though, as can be proven just by reading over the partitioning
62 code in glis. Bash is not an ideal language to write a partitioner, 400
63 lines of bash code full of nested loops is just too much for any normal
64 person to handle. Another area where this fails is in editing system
65 config files, the way glis does this, in my opinion, is not pretty and
66 full of potential bugs. I think it would be very difficult to write a
67 good, stable config parser/editor in bash.
68
69 So, I do understand a few of the reason's for GLI, but after two months
70 the difference is still not fully clear to me.
71
72 >> but it seems like most of core developer's don't have as much spare
73 >> time to devote to the project as they may have initially thought.
74 >
75 > Not entirely true... just because cvs activity isn't streaming,
76 > doesn't mean it's not being worked on.
77
78 I didn't mean to imply that no work had been done or that the work that
79 has been done is not significant. I believe quite the opposite, all I
80 was trying to imply was that the project may take a bit longer than
81 previously thought. (I'm aware that no one has really even given a
82 ballpark estimate of the eta for gli, but I think it's hard to argue
83 that it's progressing as fast as it seemed it would at the end of January).
84
85 >> If you adopted GLIS as gentoo's installer right now then at least
86 >> gentoo would have something, and in 6-12 months when GLI is done you
87 >> could switch over it.
88 >
89 > Unfortunately, that would cause even further upset. See, if you
90 > introduce something new, get them to learn it, and then replace it
91 > with something with a very different feature set and design, well,
92 > you'll piss people off.
93
94 This is something I definately overlooked. But how different will the
95 feature set actually be? The way I see it GLI will have (pretty much)
96 everything GLIS had but way more, and be way cooler. Of course the
97 configuration file will be completely different and somebody who's use
98 to the GLIS config file would likely be pissed at having to switch.
99 However, I'm not convinced that this is a real issue. If people are
100 upset that gentoo switched "official" installers then so-be-it, it's not
101 like they won't be able to use the old way anymore and it's not like
102 they chose gentoo because of it's cool assed installer. I'm just trying
103 to say, if GLI was lacking in features compared to GLIS, I'd sympathize
104 with the pissed-off, otherwise, as long as they were given sufficient
105 warning, I wouldn't be too worried about them.
106
107 > It's a bit more complicated than that. There's more to application
108 > design than drawing two boxes on a white board and labeling one
109 > "Backend" and one "GUI" no matter what people say.
110
111 For a lot of applications I would agree, but not for this one. If a gui
112 was developed for glis and then we wanted to switch it to gli, with the
113 foresight that it would be switched, it could easily be made up of three
114 main parts. 1) reading in the config 2) asking the user questions 3)
115 writing the config. 1 and 3 would need to be completely rewritten for a
116 different installer, 2 (which is the essence of the GUI and most
117 difficult) could remain largely the same, except for maybe a few more
118 features that would need to be added to it.
119
120 > there have probably been few bugs in GLIS because it doesn't meet the
121 > needs of the majority of users.
122
123 You're probably right. Small user base generally equals small number of
124 bugs found. But I think glis doesn't meet the needs of the majority for
125 two main reasons, 1) no interface to the config file 2) no one really
126 knows about it.
127
128 > As a (rather contrived) for-instance...
129 >
130 > We build an installer like GLI with multiple front ends,
131 > auto-deployment for large networks, reusable... [SNIP] The world is a
132 > better place. Gentoo is a better distro. Linux gains more acceptance.
133 >
134 It's a nice story, but I'm not really sure I see it's relevance to not
135 using GLIS. In fact I see exactly the opposite, why hold an installer
136 back only to delay the world being a better place ;-).
137
138 Basically, I was just seeing if anyone thought it would be a worthwhile
139 idea to adopt glis as an "unofficial-official" installer until gli is
140 ready, develop a working UI that could be easily interchanged between
141 both, and give the user's a little something right now. There's a lot of
142 issues involved in doing this and perhaps for now it's best to just
143 remain focussed on one installer instead of having the worry of two.
144
145 Thanks for your reply though, it definately cleared a few things up for me.
146
147 Scott
148
149 --
150 gentoo-installer@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-installer] Why not GLIS? Ti Leggett <leggett@×××××××.gov>