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How to improve the installer of OS/2?
Pete:
Hi Joop
I think you may be misunderstanding something as it is the operating system installer being discussed not an application installer.
Regards
Pete
Martin Iturbide:
Hi.
My idea (or what I understood of the original message) was to discuss installer for the operating system, when you want to install OS2-eCS from scratch.
Going back to the idea, it can be great if a new installer, not based on the one included on OS/2, can be produced. I can not count anymore on improvement on the eCS installer, since I don't know what is happening with the development of the OS and who owns the rights of the installer (Mensys/XEU may have the rights to use the installer, but I'm not sure if the own 100% of the source code).
Time ago I remember that Fedora used to have the Anaconda project (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda) but I don't know if it still used in the Linux scene.
What about creating an OS installer based on RPM? Something that has an easy path, an advanced path (with or without options to select the software) and something else that can allow customize the OS installer with some scripts?
Regards
ivan:
Definitely NOT based on RPM thank you!
For a start it needs to be a two part installer because of the very wide range of hardware that people use.
I would think the first part would use PCI to find out what hardware was available and then give the person installing the opportunity to go with that or to tweak what is found (like excluding components that are known to cause problems).
The second part would give the opportunity to just go ahead and install (dump everything in one very large partition) or to select exactly where different components are to go including making and formatting the necessary partitions.
In other words a very upgraded version of the old IBM installer with additions to allow installing other programs as well.
Also there should be an option to boot into a very simple maintenance desktop on the DVD.
Roderick Klein:
--- Quote from: ivan on May 23, 2015, 08:16:35 pm ---Definitely NOT based on RPM thank you!
For a start it needs to be a two part installer because of the very wide range of hardware that people use.
I would think the first part would use PCI to find out what hardware was available and then give the person installing the opportunity to go with that or to tweak what is found (like excluding components that are known to cause problems).
The second part would give the opportunity to just go ahead and install (dump everything in one very large partition) or to select exactly where different components are to go including making and formatting the necessary partitions.
In other words a very upgraded version of the old IBM installer with additions to allow installing other programs as well.
Also there should be an option to boot into a very simple maintenance desktop on the DVD.
--- End quote ---
I think its time the people in the community stop having this negative attitude towards YUM.
It makes no sense. Yeh it has issue's but problems can and should be fixed.
One thing I can tell is that plenty of people still use OS/2 and eCS. At the last OS/2 user group meeting I bumped into 2 people who had no clue how to update Firefox. While David Yeo (thanks for doing that!), makes WPI avaliable to install the required DLL's. But they simply do not know! They wanted to ditch OS/2 because the web browser does not work.
Does issue's the community should be more concerned about instead of mentioning YUM/RPM is evil does not work. What ever negative feelings people have. Issue's are around to be fixed and resolved.
So if you do not like YUM come up with an alternative and start coding.
The current eCS installer I worked on for years at Mensys is also just house a cards.
What I mean with that is that it uses CID in the background (behind the graphical installer). But realy down below it still runs all off the seperate old IBM installers. Its a real pitty IBM never backported the installer of the power PC to the Intel based OS/2 version. From what I understood it was ONE installer backend for the WHOLE OS.
The intel version has RSPINST, MPTS, PEER, TCPINST, MINSTALL just to name a few. eCS adds on Warpin.
The eCS installer is pretty good and most problems have been taken out. That said because of the legacy installers from IBM. No central database is around that tells the OS what files are installed.
And updates via the internet that take into account what other packages are needed YUM/RPM only provides so far. So people can wish away YUM/RPM but what can we then use as an aletrnative ?
Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE
Martin Iturbide:
--- Quote from: Roderick Klein on May 23, 2015, 09:01:17 pm ---I think its time the people in the community stop having this negative attitude towards YUM.
It makes no sense. Yeh it has issue's but problems can and should be fixed.
--- End quote ---
We already discussed this subject and I think we already have listed the good and bad about RPM/YUM. While I'm "sucking it up" with RPM/YUM because it is very good to install dependencies, I really hope that the "YUMIE thing" will be a step forward. But from what I had been told having the option to move away the FHS from the root drive is not on their plan.
Neither of us can say what the community should stop taking about, if it is your opinion is good, but it does not mean that we should stop having a positive or negative attitude towards a software on this platform and be silent about it. A community is just a bunch of people that may have different opinions and I want to keep it a free space for people to talk about this platform.
Regards
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