Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comments. Please see my responses below.
Mike Gerdts wrote:
> 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.
>
It is our plan to allow users to select based on functional grouping of
packages
as well as selecting individual packages, if that's what they want to
do. We don't
have all the details yet. When we do, we will post them here for all
to review.
> 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.
>
>
This can be done, but I am not sure we will have this feature available
in the next release.
We will keep it in our list of requested features.
> Whenever a package, cluster, or feature is selected, it should be
> possible to see the size on the media and installed size.
>
Another item to add to our list of requsted features.
> 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.
>
This feature should be available in the early 2008 release. When you
specify
to include a package, the distro constructor will pull in all packages
that it depends on.
> Packages should be available via a descriptive name and the package
> name that would be used with pkgadd.
>
Packages/Cluster of Package selection from the GUI will be available with
descriptive names. Not just names of the package.
> 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.
>
>
We don't have any details on these configurations at this time. When we
have a proposal,
we will post the proposal here for you to review and comment.
>> 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}')"
>
>
>
People might have made customization to a running system by just adding
or removing files.
They might not do all their customization on package boundaries. They
might also have
modified files that are added by packages. How do we recreate a the
package with
those modifications. Therefore, just getting the list of installed
packages is not enough
if we want to create an identical system to the customized one that they
are current running.
Thanks,
--Karen
