Re: BSD Installer as a replacement for sysinstall?

Travis Poppe wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> For quite some time I've been looking forward to seeing sysinstall go
> and be replaced with a new system that's user interface agnostic. This
> would allow developers to create a user interface of their choice
> without having to muck around with the internals of the installer. It
> seems that one of the major reasons this hasn't happened yet is simply
> due to lack of development.
> 
> Correct me of I'm wrong, but as far as I know, this is what BSD
> Installer (the DragonFly team's installer) currently does. Other than
> "political" disagreements, are there really any good reasons for us
> not to look into using BSD Installer as a replacement for sysinstall?
> I believe either FreeSBIE or LiveBSD (FreeBSD LiveCD distributions)
> has already included the BSD Installer in a recent release.

There really are very few political forces that shape things between
the BSD's, whereas the amount of cooperation is actually quite strong
and pleasant.  Hyping up the politics myth only does a disservice to
everyone.

> 
> I know Scott Long has posed this idea to the list in the past. BSD
> Installer would provide the framework needed to make bells and
> whistles such as graphical installers and so forth much more likely in
> the future. If there are some out there who dislike the interface
> provided by BSD Installer, I don't think it would be too difficult to
> write a sysinstall lookalike UI for their system.

I also posted an email to this mailing list a few days ago under the
"boot banner project" thread that described my reservations about some
of the technical aspects of the BSDInstaller project.  However, code
speaks louder than idle opinion, and I highly encourage anyone who is
interested to participate in the project and in bringing it to FreeBSD.

Scott