Nikita Karetnikov <nik...@karetnikov.org> skribis: > I haven’t seen an installer that isn’t organized in a step-by-step > fashion. A user is forced to press the “Next” button every 5 minutes or > so. It’s impossible to do anything else because that will increase the > installation time. So the user has to sit in front of the computer for > 40 minutes and wait for the button to become active. > > I assume that installers are written in such a way because it’s easier > for developers. Let’s not repeat this mistake when we write our own. > Instead, I propose to get the needed information beforehand (on the > first screen). Then it’d be only necessary to press “Install.” A user > could check the progress bar and be free to do something else.
The idea is to start with NixOS-style declarative configuration. You provide a configuration file that defines the structure of the system to be installed (or you generate that file via a M-x customize kind of user interface, say), and then run the install process, which instantiates the whole thing non-interactively. Ludo’.