Hi Karen, On Mon, 6 Jul 2009, Karen Tung wrote:
> Alok Aggarwal wrote: >> Currently the Caiman architecture supports two types >> of installers - a LiveCD based GUI and AI. Each of these installation >> environments are different in that >> one is a desktop based environment while the other is >> not. As a result, they are both built on a different >> set of packages with AI being built on a significantly >> smaller set. >> >> As we provide more installation environments in the future >> (text based interactive install, a media based AI and possibly a network >> based text install), I think there are a couple of high order issues that >> need to be sorted out. > > Another high order issue that you didn't > list is the user experience. > > - Do we include different installers in the same media? Or do we > have a media for each installer type? Or only include a few > installers on the same media? I didn't call it out specifically but that's what I was thinking. See one of the follow on mails. >> a) What kind of an image should these new installers >> (text, media based AI) be based on? Since both these >> installers are not going to offer a desktop installation >> environment, does it make sense to base them on the >> same set of packages as AI? I think it would be a >> reasonable starting point. > For installers that does not require the desktop, the > set of packages used for building the AI image > sounds like a reasonable starting point. I agree except for a media based text installer which does not support installting from IPS, I think we need the LiveCD set of packages. Not to bring up the desktop but to provide a reasonable installed system. >> b) Assuming some of these installers get delivered as >> part of the same AI image, how should the selection >> between which installer to use be made? The two obvious >> choices are to provide them via the GRUB menu or as a >> separate menu item that comes up as part of boot (kind of >> like the keyboard and language selection menu in the >> current LiveCD installer). I think one of the underlying >> requirement here is to allow this to be scriptable. Also, > Can you expand on what needs to be scriptable? The selection of which installer to pick needs to be scriptable. In the case of the VMC project, I think it needs to be able to specify booting AI from media without user intervention. Alok
