* Re: Horrible installer

[Chad Perrin]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 08:19:32PM -0800, Devin Teske wrote:
> On Jan 20, 2012, at 7:43 PM, gore <koggybsd at comcast.net> wrote:
> > 
> > why not just use 8.x or something? I'm not being sarcastic 
> > or anything either, I really am asking why not jut go to 8.2 which I 
> > also Loved?
> 
> SU+J by Kirk McKusick ?? :-D

There are things 9.0 offers that earlier versions do not.  I think 9.0 is
the first where the entire base system builds with Clang without issues,
for instance (someone correct me if I'm wrong).  The big thing I wanted
in 9.0 actually got pushed back to 9.1 at least, so I'm still waiting for
that, but that too indicates a reason that someone might not be satisfied
with 8.2.

As I mentioned earlier, it seems to me (as an outsider to the installer
development process) that offering a choice between sysinstall and
bsdinstall for at least one RELEASE of FreeBSD might have been a good
idea, to give users a transition period and ensure that if there are some
unforseen show-stoppers that did not appear in testing there would still
be an option for those who need it.  After talking some more to people
who actually know a bit about how the installers work, I still don't see
why that would not be the better choice.

On the other hand, bsdinstall does get the job done, at least for my
purposes.  It just does so in a way that feels a bit more
straightjacketed, and it rubs me personally a bit the wrong way.  Your
mileage may vary, and it certainly has not been a show-stopper for me so
far.  The actual installed OS is still my favorite, and when forced to
screw around with something like Debian or (heaven forfend) MS Windows,
it makes me want to tear my hair out or cry or break something.  In the
final analysis, the worst this has done for me is make me feel just
slightly inconvenienced during installation, having to restart the
installation process more often when I made a misstep for instance.  No
biggie, I guess.  It's certainly not worth giving up being able to build
the whole base system with Clang instead of GCC to have sysinstall
instead of bsdinstall.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]