Removal of sysinstall from HEAD and lack of a post-install configuration tool

[Lawrence Stewart]

On 12/27/11 16:13, Ron McDowell wrote:
> Doug Barton wrote:
>> The story so far ...
>>
>> sysinstall was removed from HEAD in October. I (and others) objected on
>> the basis that at this time there is no replacement for the post-install
>> configuration role that sysinstall played. More sysinstall components
>> were then removed. Then the old version of libdialog (which sysinstall
>> used) was removed. Thus at this point it's not possible to easily
>> restore sysinstall.
>>
>> So my question is, how much do you care? Is lack of that functionality
>> in HEAD something that we care about?
>>
>>
>> Doug
>
> We have around 90 web servers running 8.2p5 right now [and yes, I did
> update the lot on Christmas Eve but that's a different story] and they
> will not be upgraded to 9.0 until/unless the post-install functionality
> that was lost by the removal of sysinstall is reintegrated in some way.
> I also complained about it and was told in effect, "too bad." Everyone
> who commented said sysinstall caused more problems than it solved,
> although I've been using it for any system changes I needed that it was
> capable of doing for as long back as I can remember, and my first
> FreeBSD box was v2.2.
>
> I think removing any functionality that was in a previous release
> without providing an equal-or-better alternative is a bad idea, and that
> needs to be considered more carefully in the future.
>
> So this is not just a +1 vote, it's a +90.

Sysintall is in 9 and will not be removed from the 9 branch. The 
installer used on the release media has changed, but as far as I 
understand, there is nothing stopping you from running sysinstall from a 
installer shell or using it for post installation configuration.

Doug is only referring to the head branch (which will eventually in 
~18-24 months become the 10 branch), so you should be able to have the 
best of both worlds with 9 i.e. try bsdinstall, fall back to sysinstall 
when you find bugs or missing features (don't forget to lodge bug 
reports for problems you find so that bsdinstall can be improved).

On the topic of Doug's actual question, I see minimal sense in 
resurrecting sysinstall in head now. I would suggest it be done much 
closer to (say, 6 months before) the 10.0 release cycle, if no suitable 
post-installation configuration tool has materialised.

In the meantime, cajole everyone who pops up saying "I really want post 
installation configuration support" to get involved with writing a 
bsdinstaller-like script (I think it should be completely separate to 
bsdinstaller, but perhaps use the same backend shell script 
functions/infrastructure) to do the job.

Cheers,
Lawrence