[lokisetup] setup v2 (was lokisetup for dummies)

Timothee Besset ttimo at idsoftware.com
Sun Jan 4 06:58:27 EST 2004


Ryan C. Gordon wrote:

>1) Works everywhere it needs to without bells and whistles.
>2) Has the absolute _smallest_ disk footprint possible.
>3) Doesn't take a PhD to make an installer for.
>  
>
I think my design matches these three points. The bash-based bootstrap 
script identifies platform and OS, and will work everywhere just as the 
current loki_setup does.

I think it's good to have some UI drivers pre-installed on the target 
box (such as a gtk2 installer), but you can always bundle UI drivers 
with the setup (likely, you would always bundle the minimal text-based one).

Finally, a state machine in XML makes it very easy to write setups. 
Easier than a script approach (easiest and most portable script would be 
bash-based, and that's quite nasty to write for newbies). For instance 
you can look at the sample state file:

https://zerowing.idsoftware.com:666/setup/trunk/image-defaults/config/states.xml
Each state is associated with a ui, which fires up some events, and 
causes the state to change. Simple to write, and still gives you a lot 
of freedom.

I spent some time on #autogen talking with the autogen developers, and 
they are clearly aiming at something with more bells and whistles, their 
goals are similar, but compared to my design their approach is kinda 
over-engineered. The big features they care about like automatic 
dependencies handling and automatic updates are not so much important to 
me. Or at least I consider they can be done later on an as-needed and 
optional basis.

TTimo



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