Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Gentoo installer project

[Eric Sammer]

Dan Armak wrote:
> From the linked file:
> 		- The same flexibility as the current manual process with NO loss of
> 		  any of the options (custom partitioning, file system type selection,
> 		  individual package selections, etc.). If any option, no matter how
> 		  seemingly esoteric, is removed, the community will (rightfully)
> 		  reject the project in its entirety.
>
> AFAICS, the only truly encompassing solution would be to provide an interface
> of sorts to a console. The user could view and edit commands generated by the
> installer, see their raw output, pause operation and insert commands of his
> own, etc.

While I believe that being able to pause between steps and drop to a 
shell is a useful feature (especially for those learning), I don't think 
it's absolutely required. What I mean by same flexibility is to allow 
for individual package selection, file system type selection, custom 
partitioning schemes, and other things we get to do during the current 
installs. Some of the installers I've used in the past (thinking of YaST 
from SuSE) have allowed for such things without being overly cumbersome 
to the user. The console installer could, for instance, drop the user 
into cfdisk for custom partitioning (just an example) while the gtk 
client can use a gtk table with very little custom control work to do 
the same.

Someone (klieber, maybe) suggested a console view to display what hte 
installer was actually doing which might not be a bad idea. The Mac OS X 
  installer has a "view log" menu item that displays just about 
everything it's doing down to detected disks and the like. I think 
something like this might be good. The console install can do the same 
by supplying an option to switch to a log view. It's all pretty open ended.

> If he wanted to use something not yet provided by the installer,
> he'd just tell it to skip a step and do it manually.

That's also interesting.

> What do you think?

I think it raises some good points and ideas. A console view type thing 
might be good for education and interjecting commands during phases of 
installation.

Thanks for your comments.
-- 
Eric Sammer
Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org