[arch-releng] the future of quickinst

[Dan McGee]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Aaron Griffin schrieb:
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter at plaetinck.be>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> * aif -p automatic -c /path/to/configfile:
>>> the recommended way: you have
>>> the ability to specify partitioning/filesystems/package lists/hostname
>>> etc in a config file format which i'll try to keep as simple as
>>> possible.
>>> that, and the ability to define custom hooks and whatnot to implement
>>> custom logic in your config
>>
>> This seems the most ideal here. If we're assuming you're
>> mass-installing or something of the sort, the installer needs to know
>> all this information for each machine.
>>
>> I think we should even skip the initial "quickinst" copy and just go
>> this route - though providing a sample config file would be necessary
>> though
>>
>
> I agree.
>
> Someone could easily create a custom installation medium with a custom aif
> automatic configuration and use that for mass installation.

My only thought is whether this is even necessary- I'm guessing most
people used quickinst as just a part of a full automated install (e.g.
shell script that first does partitioning, mounting, etc).

I wouldn't mind a tool that takes care of this for me, but if it isn't
useful for a wide variety of cases, it won't be used. In addition, any
config file format we write is surely not as flexible as a shell
script would be.

-Dan