Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Jason Zaman <perfinion@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Rebooting the Installer Project
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 09:52:28
Message-Id: 20150721095207.GB5015@meriadoc.Home
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Rebooting the Installer Project by Andrew Savchenko
1 On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 03:05:04AM +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
2 > On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 10:51:00 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
3 > > Dnia 2015-07-18, o godz. 12:01:48
4 > > Matthew Marchese <maffblaster@g.o> napisał(a):
5 > >
6 > > > I have recently pressed the reboot button on the ol' Installer project. I've been able to talk to quite a few developers one-on-one via IRC concerning my plans. Most seem to be in support of Gentoo having a "official" installer (the biggest concern is appears to be how things will be implemented and the amount of features involved). This e-mail is to fulfill GLEP 39's request for comments (RFC), concerns, requests, etc. Since I'm a little new to the project I'm coming with a bit of ignorance; I know the previous Installer project fostered mixed feelings.
7 > > >
8 > > > If you'd like to review before replying you can see the Wiki page and find the source on GitHub: https://github.com/gentoo/stager
9 > > >
10 > > > To summarize I'm writing it in pure Python 3. It first will be able to create full backups (stage 4s) and recoveries. After that is finished I plan to move on to installations. There will potentially be a web interface UI for it. Others are free to create other front-ends; to me a web UI makes the most sense and would probably require the least deps.
11 > > >
12 > > > I'd like to hear it all so please speak your mind. Looking forward to hearing from you.
13 > >
14 > > On a semi-related note, I was thinking about doing a semi-related
15 > > project :).
16 > >
17 > > I personally don't think Gentoo needs installer as-is. However, I think
18 > > we'd really benefit from having some kind of helper scripts / checklist
19 > > of tasks to be done prior to/after install.
20 > >
21 > > For example, you'd run 'check-my-install' script and it'd tell you what
22 > > you likely forgot to set up :).
23 >
24 > Maybe a bit off-topic, but occasionally I need a tool to "fast
25 > install Gentoo and fine-tune it later". This happens quite often on
26 > a new job box, oh during visits where I'm given a workstation and
27 > 3-4 hours to set it up before doing real work and so on.
28 >
29 > The idea is to have binary-based Gentoo ready to work on general
30 > common hardware with such software out of the box as fully-fledged
31 > modern gui browsers (chromium, firefox), libreoffice, xterm,
32 > screen, vim, compilers, ldap support and other dev tools. Set of
33 > packages may vary, but the idea is that they should work out of the
34 > box due to tight constrains on initial system configuration (boss
35 > should see that I'm doing my job at the end of the day).
36 >
37 > But afterwards I'd like to tune this setup in a usual Gentoo way:
38 > configure kernel, USE flags, {C,CXX,F,FC,LD}FLAGS, select proper
39 > alternatives and so on more or less accordant to the devmanual.
40 >
41 > Self prepared catalyst build for general ~amd64 looks appropriate
42 > to the task, but they require too much maintenance effort: each
43 > update is a pain and quite time consuming and I need such images
44 > only once or twice per year, but still I need them!
45 >
46 > In the ideal world it would be nice to have such stage4 ebuilds
47 > available to speed-up initial installation and configuration
48 > process.
49 >
50 > Best regards,
51 > Andrew Savchenko
52
53 Take a look at the new project Blueness is working on:
54 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:RelEng_GRS
55
56 It basically builds binpkgs for a few standard configurations so it
57 sounds exactly like what you want.
58
59 -- Jason

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Rebooting the Installer Project Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@g.o>