Re: new sysinstall

[Chris Pressey <cpressey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 09:30:08 -0700 (PDT)
Matthew Dillon <dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> :As long as the web server's there to present the interface, you still
> :could use sh + C.    I think what's being decided is not what will be
> :used, but what it will be possible to use. 
> 
>     Right.  What we can depend on being available in the base system.

So... does that mean that, whatever tools were included for the purpose
of installing, won't be able to be removed later (without serious
repercussions) if the sysadmin decides they don't need them?

i.e. does "is an install tool" imply "is required in the base system"?

I had some other thoughts wrt this thread, pretty trivial actually:

- Licensing.  Last I looked into it, GPL didn't play nice with being
'bundled' with non-GPL stuff.  Does a live CD filesystem with both GPL
and non-GPL tools count as 'bundling'?  Would we have to get the
author's permission?  How does the requirement that GPL tools must come
with source affect the footprint?  Are these, taken together, a strong
enough reason to prefer LGPL/Artistic/BSD/etc licensed tools instead?

- Free space on the CD.  I think it would be nice to have some, for
third-party 'value adding', so that someone can make a distro of DFBSD
with their own applications included.  This could be especially nice on
a live CD.  How much free space would be typically desired, and how much
would be practical to set aside?

- Language.  Last time I mentioned it, it was mostly in jest, but I'm
starting to think that if we want an absolutely minimal language with
*exactly* the right abstractions statically compiled in, OpenZz is well
worth considering (http://openzz.sourceforge.net/)  The dynamic parser
core is only a little more than 200K in size - add to that the size of
the required libraries and a little glue and you have an extremely
relevant (and flexible) language in an extremely small package.  (If
nothing else, I thought it was a very fun tool to play with, so if
you're at all interested in dynamic parsing, check it out!)

- XML.  All I can say about XML is that, if there is indeed a way to
interchange system information, then it's something worth looking into,
and if there isn't, it's hard to see the need for it.  That is, if I can
write an XML file which describes how I'd like my system to be set up,
and various OS'es can read and understand that same file for their
seperate installation purposes, then yeah, of course it would be nice
for DFBSD to understand it too.  The thing is, I'm not aware of such an
XML format, and if DFBSD were to propose one, would other OS'es move to
be able to leverage it?  i.e. isn't XML install config a cross-OS
project, rather than a solely DFBSD one?

Just my 2c for today

-Chris