sysinstall as a post-install tool

[Garrett Cooper]

(sysinstall@ BCCed)

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Eitan Adler <lists at eitanadler.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the the recent sysinstall thread there seems to be general agreement that
> having a post-install configuration tool is a good thing. Until such a
> tool is written I think it would be a good idea to use sysinstall for
> this purpose.  I am willing to do the work to restore sysinstall and
> maintain it as a post-install tool until a new one is written.
>
> My plan would be to:
>
> - Restore sysinstall and libodialog
> - Statically link libodialog and make it specific to sysinstall
>       A rewrite of sysinstall to use libdialog is not worth it. It would
>       be better to just write a new configuration tool at that point.
> - Remove front end non-configure facing features (ie "upgrade" and
> installation options)
> - Remove scripting support from sysinstall
>
> Additionally I would agree to
> - Ensure that sysinstall continues to function as time goes on
> - Review and test patches to sysinstall
>
> What I am not agreeing to:
> - Rewrite sysinstall
> - Make a new tool
>
> Please follow up to freebsd-sysinstall@

    Reviving sysinstall solely for this purpose is probably a big step
backwards (especially because it's after 9.0-RELEASE): sysinstall
needs to be permanently retired and bsdinstall needs work becoming a
more complete tool (FWIW, iXsystems has tentatively offered to pick up
the maintainership of the installer so that it's properly integrated
into pc-sysinstall as we originally intended to do).
    So we shouldn't be wasting effort on sysinstall. Please talk to
Devin Teske about his 'host-setup' tool first.
Thanks,
-Garrett