System installation is very different from building or the installation of 
optional packages.

There is a minimal set of packages that must be installed to have a working 
system. A portion of those packages are system HW dependent.

Conceptually I describe it as follows:

Base system components
Hardware specific components
Optional use case specific components

At one time, the SunOS install broke out the use case specific components as 
options. Historically I always selected everything except games if that was 
listed as a separate set. Otherwise I simply took "all". However, that was at a 
time when "all" fit on one or two 60 MB 1/4" tapes. We are far past that mark 
now.

Despite that, disk is now so cheap I'd be inclined to install "all" if there 
were a good mechanism for selecting the window manager at login. This can be 
done, but to the best of my knowledge the current arrangement is clumsy and may 
well harbor pathological cases. I'm sure Alan is far more aware of those than I 
ever wish to know. As I understand it, the choice of package at install time 
also configures the window manager. That works for most people, but makes 
experimenting with different window managers awkward.

Disk is currently ~$0.02/GB, so we're talking nickels and dimes to just dump it 
all onto the disk now. That's actually a lot faster to do if it's just a large 
cpio(1) archive.

However, the hardware specific parts need to be handled in a separate phase of 
the install. Currently we have multiple installs depending upon whether it is a 
/dev/console or /dev/tty[ab] connected system. I don't know how that is 
currently implemented, though I do see that there is logic that is detecting 
the presence of serial ports. I shall know more when the serial port kits for 
the Z400 I ordered yesterday arrive.

IIRC the traditional install booted a miniroot and ran a shell script from 
tape. It's not flashy, but it worked very well. Most importantly, it was easy 
to discover, understand and modify. As security was not an issue for my 
unconnected home system, flipping the diag switch on my 3/60 booted miniroot 
from a small sliver of disk I set aside for that. It was rarely needed, but it 
meant I did not need the install media to bring up a corrupted system.

The system install task has not changed so it's difficult for me to see why we 
should have more than a single install script that reads a set of files which 
describe the contents of the 3 phases I outlined above. That makes it very 
simple to add whatever HW detection logic is needed in a single script which at 
the HW phase queries the system and generates the HW specific pkg list. 

 That's how I'd handle the task. I'll let someone who knows the current system 
comment on what is being done now. I have a machine HW failure to diagnose :-(

Reg     On Saturday, March 13, 2021, 11:29:32 AM CST, Alan Coopersmith 
<alan.coopersm...@oracle.com> wrote:  
 
 On 3/13/21 4:27 AM, Stephan Althaus wrote:
> But i don't know how to integrate this into the build system nor at packaging 
> level.

There is no way to script this inside IPS packages - instead your script
would have to be outside the packaging system and run pkg commands to
install/uninstall the packages as needed.

    -alan-

_______________________________________________
openindiana-discuss mailing list
openindiana-discuss@openindiana.org
https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
  
_______________________________________________
openindiana-discuss mailing list
openindiana-discuss@openindiana.org
https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss

Reply via email to