svn commit: r223897 - in head: release usr.sbin/bsdinstall/scripts

[Nathan Whitehorn]

On 07/15/11 09:16, Vadim Goncharov wrote:
> Hi Nathan Whitehorn!
>
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 08:17:09 -0500; Nathan Whitehorn<nwhitehorn at freebsd.org>  wrote:
>
>>>> New Revision: 223897
>>>> URL: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/223897
>>>> Log:
>>>>     Per request of the docs team, install docs as packages, instead of via
>>>>     the normal distfile mechanism. Thanks to Marc Fonvieille for the patch and
>>>>     for putting up with me taking entirely too long to commit this!
>>> [...]
>>>>    		"Network" "Networking configuration" \
>>>>    		"Services" "Set daemons to run on startup" \
>>>>    		"Time Zone" "Set system timezone" \
>>>> +		"Handbook" "Install FreeBSD Handbook (requires network)" \
>>> [...]
>>>> +    --checklist "This menu will allow you to install the whole documentation set
>>>> +from the FreeBSD Documentation Project: Handbook, FAQ and articles.\n\n
>>>> +Please select the language versions you wish to install.  At minimum,
>>>> +you should install the English version, this is the original version
>>>> +of the documentation.\n\n
>>>> +NB: This requires a working, configured network connection." 0 0 0 \
>>> [...]
>>>> +	en	"English Documentation (recommended)" ${DIST_DOC_EN:-on} \
>>> Umm, _configured network_ even for original English docs? In 8.2R those doc
>>> packages for every lang were installed by sysinstall from CD (DVD1 actually),
>>> as it should really be for new user - e.g. if network could be configured only
>>> after reading Handbook, installing mpd5 from CD/DVD packages, and so on.
>>>
>>> Or am I missing something, and it will still be available on the disk?
>>>
>> The packages are really big (40 MB per), and there's only a small amount
>> of space available on the disc.
> But they were so a lot while:
>
> 7.4-RELEASE$ du -chd 0 /usr/share/doc/??_*
> 832K	/usr/share/doc/bn_BD.ISO10646-1
> 212K	/usr/share/doc/da_DK.ISO8859-1
[...]
>
> And still a packed onto installation disks. Why was there space earlier?
> And for it is wasted nowadays?

The installation CDs are live CDs now, which means that they provide a 
functional fixit environment (ls, for instance) as well as letting 
people try out the operating system and expanding the range of system 
functionality available to the installer. This takes space. Some of that 
space is at the expense of other things, but I personally believe that 
trade-off is very much worth while.

>> We *could* fit the English ones, but it
>> badly complicates the release scripts to begin doing package generation,
>> and Marc and I decided to do it this way.
> How this can complicate release scripts, when packing release image and
> generating packages are two logically separated steps?
>
> Anyway, the impact on user's perception of FreeBSD will be too bad to measure
> it the amount of scirpts work. The system just can't live without beginner's
> documentation, and I've already given one very practical example when this is
> absolutely needed.
>

This was the decision of the documentation team, and as far as 
documentation is concerned, I will do whatever they ask with regard to 
the release scripts and the installer. Presumably, the release will also 
include a second CD (or DVD) full of packages, which will contain the 
full handbook. The complication for the release building scripts is that 
they generate finished ISOs, so anything that goes on the image must be 
available to the script. The scripts no longer build packages of any 
kind, and so building even one package substantially adds to their 
complication.

I also personally think it's not required or even important to provide a 
way to install the handbook from disc1. The main documentation format 
for it is HTML, for which we package no readers on disc1. Additionally, 
I'm guessing that basically all of our users read it on www.freebsd.org 
these days instead of from /usr/local/share, which potentially makes it 
superfluous to package it at all. Further, without the handbook, how 
would a new user know to look for it at that path?
-Nathan