On 9/6/07, Karen W. Tung <Karen.Tung at sun.com> wrote:
\> We have come up with the following for the early 2008 release.
> This is a very high level list of features. When we come to a more final
> list, we will have further discussions about details on each item.
>
> * From a GUI, the user should be able to select a list of packages to
> be included to build a custom distro.
>
> * From the command line, user provide the Distro Constructor (DC) with
> a list of packages. The DC will pull in all other necessary
> packages
> to create a self-consistent installation image.
>
At the other end of the spectrum, I don't care what the package name
is. The types of selections that I want to make are:
Start with a rich command line environment
Add hardware support for V240, V440, ... 25k, T2000
Add hardware support for all PCI and PCI-e devices
Add all shells
Add zones
Add dtrace
Add Live Upgrade
Add all locales
When another shell or locale is integrated, I don't want to have to
tell the next release to add another package. It is quite likely that
the "features" are represented as package clusters.
If I know that I want /usr/sbin/dtrace and /usr/bin/gdiff it should be
smart enough to figure out the package name for me. It would be
reasonable for it to show me the clusters that the given package
appears in so that I have a sufficiently large clue as to other things
that are likely related.
Whenever a package, cluster, or feature is selected, it should be
possible to see the size on the media and installed size.
If I decide that I want to deselect a package and that would cause
other packages to be removed, it should be possible to see what
packages and clusters (whole or partial) this affects.
Packages should be available via a descriptive name and the package
name that would be used with pkgadd.
Oops, no longer very high level - let me move on.
> * The DC release will come with a few predefined "useful"
> configurations, which can be helpful to users who want to create
> their
> custom distribution with some minor modification.
Review of the "useful" configurations is essential. It may be useful
to ping the sysadmin and installation communities to let them know
about the thread that is started on caiman-discuss. This will be a
good heads up to those that aren't following the details that
something of importance to them is being discussed.
> Features not to be included in the early 2008 release, but will be
> consider for the future.
>
> * Create a distribution based on an installed and configured system.
How would this be different from the following imaginary command line,
using features that were already slated to be included?
create_distribution --pkglist="$(pkginfo | nawk '{print $2}')"
--
Mike Gerdts
http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/
