[arch-releng] AIF: a call for testing

[Aaron Griffin]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter at plaetinck.be> wrote:
> Hello beloved release fanatics,
>
> you may have already heard of aif. (Arch Linux Installation
> Framework[1]).
> A project of mine that originally begun to allow me to do automated
> installations, but soon was extended to contain all things needed to
> do full "interactive" installations (a la /arch/setup) [2].
> It's actually really a framework where all backend code (ui,
> partitioning, ...) is available as libraries, making it possible to
> cleanly implement different kinds of installers (automated, interactive
> etc) (lots of the code in those libraries is actually a refactoring of
> the code in /arch/setup)
> It also supports dm_crypt and lvm.
>
> It got much interest from the Arch devs, and later they told me
> they want to use it as the next official installer.
>
> That's great :).
>
> Now, it would be very good if we could shift to it asap.
> I'm not saying this to promote my own stuff, rather I think we all agree
> on the technical advantages (old installer is hard to maintain, it's
> "spaghetticode", we don't want to maintain 2 installers at the same
> time, aif is a better longterm solution etc)
>
> But, we need to start testing and patching.
> In it's current state, aif is actually quite usable and most of
> the time produces installations just as well as /arch/setup does.
> But there are probably bugs that I'm not aware of yet.
> I want to get most, if not all of the bugs ironed out before 2.6.29 is
> out. So that when we start releasing images for the new release, aif
> does not become the bottleneck.
>
>
> How can you test?
> Simple: aif will be included on 2009.02. That's a good starting point.
> However: there are also git packages on aur.  I recommend you install
> aif-experimental-git which contains the latest features and fixes.
> You can easily install a git package on the installation cd :
> see http://github.com/Dieterbe/aif/tree/experimental/HOWTO
>
> I also have a TODO file, which contains a list of issues (most of them
> minor) and some thoughts.
> http://github.com/Dieterbe/aif/tree/experimental/TODO

I did 3 AIF installs on vmware recently. They all went great, but I
didn't try to stress anything. This is more for an FYI.

Would you want to forward this message on to arch-general when we get
the release announcement out?