Hi Dave,
My apologies, I think I did a poor job of communicating some
assumptions in my e-mails. However, I think using AI will help the intern team;
some of the benefits I see are:
*To interface with the AI engine an XML manifest only needs be provided.
XML can easily be verified and is a well defined format which can be
verified by the team as they develop, allowing for an easy incremental
development process.
*Building a UI is one component required for a text installer. If
the Slim Engine is used, then a UI and an ability to interface with the C
based Slim Install framework will be needed. This is two components and
thus more complexity and code the team would need to develop to reach the
same end goal.
*Using the AI engine allows maximal functionality in the future, however,
if the Slim Engine is used that limits future functionality as that
engine was never developed to be a configurable and extensible
installer - it serves our "one button install" use case - only.
*A "one button install" straightforward and simple use case can be built
through an AI manifest without exposing all of the features of AI, if we
don't want to.
Thank you,
Clay
On Thu, 14 May 2009, Dave Miner wrote:
> This discussion seems like it's gone a bit off the rails. Karen, if your
> goal is to provide direction to the intern team, then I'd suggest drawing a
> very clear line to scope a set of functionality that is possible for them to
> complete given the constraints in time and experience. It seems like we've
> wandered into larger, longer-term goals which this particular team is
> unlikely to meet.
>
> Dave
>
