On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 05:58:50AM -0500, Daniel Taylor wrote: > 3. Debian developers got upgrading right a while ago, so they aren't > as concerned with getting the installer improved. Not quite right. Debian developers HATE the current installation floppy setup. Let me restate, debian developers DESPISE the current installation floppy setup. It's monolithic, extremely hard to maintain, and has to be custom designed for each architecture it's deployed on. (I say floppy, because even though you may install from CD, it's still the same floppy design...) Now, let me dig up the project name and paraphrase its goals: modularity, plugable front-ends, cross-platform, easy to use. Debconf has enabled part of this now with ITS plugable frontends, and once we get all/most packages agreeing that noninteractive installations ARE a viable option, then we'll be far along the way of making installations MUCH easier. Ok, back to the project, debian-installer. The mailing lists to watch include debian-boot, debian-devel, and possibly debian-dpkg. debian-boot recently had this post to the list that gives a good overview of what needs to happen for a C-based debconf and how it relates to the new debian-installer.[1] I didn't find much more than that. You can use anonymous cvs access to look at the debian-installer source if you'd like. Reference the debian-boot mailing list for info. > That said, has anyone here seen work on a source-based apt front end > for Debian? Hmm... There was talk on debian-devel about such a thing. You mean something like a BSD ports functionality w/o going so far as to needing ports? Recently, *.deb's have been required to add "Build-Depends:" fields for the tools and libraries that a package needs to build from source. apt-get does have a "source" target that downloads the necessary files and applies the debian patch to the original tarball in a working directory. Read the apt-get manpages for more details. 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2002/debian-boot-200207/msg00052.html -- Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net> | a.k.a. ^chewie http://www.wookimus.net/ | s.k.a. gunnarr -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20020703/2cc23f30/attachment.pgp