new sysinstall

[Mik Firestone]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at 09:28:28AM -0700, Matthew Dillon wrote:
> 
> :
> :With all the messages in this wandering thread, I've gotten lost.  Matt, 
> :can you explain what you have in mind again, please?
> :
> :Richard Coleman
> :richardcoleman at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
>     Summary so far of "How to rewrite sysinstall".
> 
>     * Make CDRom #1 a fully live image, allowing the system to boot into a
>       complete environment.  Include various additional tools on the CDRom,
>       including X.
> 
>     * Split a normal installation into two stages.  Stage 1 is responsible 
>       for FDISK and basic partitioning (/, swap, and /usr), and simply copies
>       the CDRom to the hard drive and reboots.  Stage 2 is responsible for
>       the more sophisticated aspects of the installation.  Both stages
>       will use the same scripts, languages, & utilities and such to do
>       their work since both the CDRom boot and the HD boot will have a full
>       environment to play in.
> 
>     * Choose a set of tools to build the installation GUI.  Desired features
>       are to be able to run the installation from a character terminal, from
>       a graphical environment, from a serial port, from a remote
>       character terminal or graphical environment via the network, or
>       totally automated.
> 
I do not know much about this project, but have you considered Cursed
GTK for the GUI?  If I have understood everything correctly, it allows
any application compiled against GTK+ to work in a terminal.  This would
allow a decent interface via serial/remote installs and give a nice,
shiny X environment as well.

Both Ruby and Python have GTK+ libraries available, and so this could
work with whatever language is ultimately chosen.

With respect to PHP4, I cringe.  I admit it may have been the quality of
the "code" is was attempting to maintain, but I really feel the language
is not sufficiently structured to aid in good coding practices.  Yes,
there is no language that can prevent people from bad code but PHP4
seems almost as bad as perl ( and it kills me to say that ) in
encouraging people to write really bad code.

As a perl programmer with over 8 years experience, I think I am far too
biased to offer my opinion on either Ruby or Python.

Mik