unofficial mirror of guix-devel@gnu.org 
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com>
To: sapientech@openmailbox.org
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: GSOC 2016 Application
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 09:03:07 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87h9fuilz8.fsf@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <c6e66360c0bc32ca5dc292ab38921651@openmailbox.org> (sapientech@openmailbox.org's message of "Thu, 24 Mar 2016 15:06:35 -0700")

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1972 bytes --]

sapientech@openmailbox.org writes:

> My name is Dylan, and I am a Swarthmore College student interested in
> working with Guix this summer! Attached is my proposal to help develop
> an installation wizard for GuixSD. Please let me know if there are any
> questions or comments.

This is a great idea!  You might be interested to know that from Thomas
Ingram has made a similar proposal.  My feedback to you would be similar
to the feedback I gave to him, which is here:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-03/msg00903.html

> - Consider both a text-based and graphical application using
> guile-ncurses/libRUIN

While it's good to plan for both text and graphical UI, maybe it will be
more efficient to pick one to focus on, and treat the other as a stretch
goal?

> - Design for portability for use in other software distributions that
> lack a proper installer wizard

Again, this is a nice idea, but it might be more efficient to focus on
getting it to work with Guix first.

> - An emphasis on rigorous test suites, with stability prioritized over features

GuixSD is still beta software.  Is it a good idea to make one of your
goals be "the installer is stable" when the system it's installing is
not stable?

> - Research installer wizards in other distributions, and work with the
> Guix community to determine a minimal yet effective installation flow

I would be happy to share with you the hacky little shell scripts I use
to do this today.  They're simple automations of the manual procedure,
really, but perhaps they could be useful.  I am not familiar with the
implementation details of installer wizards used by other distros, but
I've seen and used my fair share of them.

In any case, I would love to have a functioning installer for GuixSD!
You're absolutely right that it would make the system more approachable
to newcomers, too.  Thank you for taking the time to work on this!

-- 
Chris

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 818 bytes --]

  parent reply	other threads:[~2016-03-25 16:03 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2016-03-24 22:06 GSOC 2016 Application sapientech
2016-03-25  2:35 ` sapientech
2016-03-25 15:01 ` Christopher Allan Webber
2016-03-25 16:03 ` Chris Marusich [this message]
2016-03-26  7:08   ` sapientech
2016-03-26 11:29     ` Ludovic Courtès
2016-03-25 20:11 ` myglc2
2016-03-26  7:21   ` sapientech

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://guix.gnu.org/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=87h9fuilz8.fsf@gmail.com \
    --to=cmmarusich@gmail.com \
    --cc=guix-devel@gnu.org \
    --cc=sapientech@openmailbox.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).