Re: Some thoughts on installers

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Nikita Karetnikov <nikita@karetnikov.org> skribis:

> I haven’t seen an installer that isn’t organized in a step-by-step
> fashion.  A user is forced to press the “Next” button every 5 minutes or
> so.  It’s impossible to do anything else because that will increase the
> installation time.  So the user has to sit in front of the computer for
> 40 minutes and wait for the button to become active.
>
> I assume that installers are written in such a way because it’s easier
> for developers.  Let’s not repeat this mistake when we write our own.
> Instead, I propose to get the needed information beforehand (on the
> first screen).  Then it’d be only necessary to press “Install.”  A user
> could check the progress bar and be free to do something else.

The idea is to start with NixOS-style declarative configuration.  You
provide a configuration file that defines the structure of the system to
be installed (or you generate that file via a M-x customize kind of user
interface, say), and then run the install process, which instantiates
the whole thing non-interactively.

Ludo’.