Re: New packages mirroring scheme, and a plan

[Chris Turner <c.turner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Justin C. Sherrill wrote:
> 
> The goal of the Plan is to make any new DragonFly system able to install
> software 'out of the box'.  You then do not have an out-of-date pkgsrc src
> tree, and you do have a relatively reliable network installation system
> that works immediately and probably faster than building from source.
> 
> Does anyone have an objection to 'The Plan'?
> 

reminds me of the discussions before 1.10 on the bsdinstaller and also
the nrelease build.. I was just investigating
this part of things trying to find out why a netboot would work on
my machine from the installer, but not from the local boot server I'm
trying to setup (anyone have ideas here - BTX error & reboot ?..)

In any case, some notes on the installer while trying to figure out
how it works / where the code is (also - this didn't seem to be 100%
resolved and will probably bite again)

http://bugs.dragonflybsd.org/issue730 : the installer update issue

threads on same:

http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/bugs/2007-07/msg00109.html
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-05/msg00090.html
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2007-07/msg00103.html

from what I can tell / recall (those directly involved please correct! -
this message is just trying to gather the pieces together)

- bsdinstaller itself had progressed beyond what was being maintained
  for dragonfly (main problem is lua 5.0 -> 5.1 compatibility?)
- scripts + dfui lua extension needed updating to match the installer
- not enough testing was done / time was available to include the
  updates Simon / Gergo / et. al. made related to this for the release
- the 1.10 installer was as a result based on the previous version
  with script updates to handle the disklabel / slice reworking

Links to updated sources for the 'experimental' updated version are
available in the ticket ref. above.

There are also some packages Joerg is maintaining in pkgsrc relating to
the installer:

sysutils/dfuibe_installer & devel/libinstaller .. not sure where the
'real deal' installer is there .. will probably investigate in the next
few days.

Installer is created as follows (second hand - again please correct)

- build installer from scratch somehow ???
- configure appropriate package URL into nrelease makefile
- create an installer image via make installer_release
- enjoy

questions of how to make the installer / nrelease extensible / more
customizable were not 100% made clear by the discussion & the problem
is complicated by:

 - needing to integrate several sources but keep the tree / base
   image clean
 - needing to differentiate 'ease of development / install customiztion'
   from 'ease of installation', but not make the two incompatible..

This doesn't really 100% relate to package distribution per-se, but it
seemed somehow related in terms of install, package integration, etc.

anyhow. I'll probably investigate the installer in the course of
reworking my network & digging into that netboot thing mentioned above -
just thought I'd mention 'me notes & see if that would help the general
'how the user experience works' discussion at all.

Thanks,

- Chris