[ANNOUNCE] DragonFly BSD Installer BETA

[Chris Pressey <cpressey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I'm pleased to announce that the installer has come to a point where
we're willing to call it BETA.  There are undoubtedly several issues to
resolve before it can go into a release, but we've also made quite a few
flawless installs with it so far.

The foundation for the installer is an abstract user interface protocol,
which allows multiple backends to work with multiple frontends.

Currently we have an "install" backend, whose job is to get DragonFly
from the CD onto a HDD - in many ways this is simply an automated,
interactive version of the instructions in /README.

We also have two frontends which are largely complete: curses and CGI. 
Currently, the curses frontend comes up automatically.  The CGI frontend
can be started manually by exiting the curses frontend and following the
directions at the livebsd.com link below.

Other backends (such as for system configuration, package management,
etc) and other frontends (GTK, etc) are planned.

There are two ways to obtain the installer for testing: you can either
build a release yourself if you have the DragonFly source tree
installed, or you can download an ISO with the installer already on it.

To build a release yourself, go to

  http://catseye.webhop.net/DragonFlyBSD/installer/

and follow the directions found there.  You basically need to download a
couple of packages, apply a patch, and run a buildworld/kernel/release
cycle.

To download the ISO, go to

  http://www.livebsd.com/dfly/

and follow the directions there.  Note that if you have any stability
problems booting from this ISO, download the latest snapshot from

  http://chlamydia.fs.ei.tum.de/pub/DragonFly/snapshots/i386/

to compare the behaviour so we know if the problems are specific to the
installer or not.

Your feedback is of course greatly appreciated!  Thanks in advance,

-Chris, on behalf of the Installer Team
 (Hiten, myself, GeekGod, Devon, & Eirik)