Re: GSOC 2016 Application

[Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com>]

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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

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