Re: Do we really need our own installer?

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> writes:

> Am 22.09.2017 um 16:26 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
>> And last but not least: the installer exists now, which makes the
>> question kinda moot IMO.  :-)
>
> The question was more about in which direction will the project go
> further: Continue to develop the current one or build on an existing
> full-featured one. Following the pure tenets or attracting more users by
> compromise.

This is not a binary choice.  We can do both.

Since the custom installer already exists and there are people who
continue its development I don’t see why we should give it up.

This will never be a graphical installer, though, so motivated people
are very welcome to explore ways to adapt existing graphical installer
frameworks so that we can use them with Guix.

This is not a question of “purity”.

I for one would like to be able to let people install GuixSD with a
simple graphical installer.  Personally, though, I don’t think that’s as
urgent as making GuixSD installable via PXE in managed environments.
Installation makes up only a tiny amount of the lifetime of a GuixSD
system, so in my opinion the project doesn’t really need a large scale
effort on this end.

--
Ricardo

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