From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mathieu Othacehe Subject: Come back and graphical installer Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2018 21:07:49 +0600 Message-ID: <87lg6sejwa.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:51058) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gDsr9-00027e-5Z for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 20 Oct 2018 11:08:00 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gDsr4-0006Xo-RI for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 20 Oct 2018 11:07:59 -0400 Received: from mail-lf1-x133.google.com ([2a00:1450:4864:20::133]:39942) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gDsr4-0006XI-In for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 20 Oct 2018 11:07:54 -0400 Received: by mail-lf1-x133.google.com with SMTP id n3-v6so436808lfe.7 for ; Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:07:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from everest ([2.132.49.11]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id f19-v6sm5758740ljc.31.2018.10.20.08.07.51 for (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 bits=256/256); Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:07:51 -0700 (PDT) List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Guix-devel Hi Guix ! First mail since a while ! I'm currently finishing a long bicycle trip, and was able to start hacking again. I picked up the "Graphical installer" task. After studying the branch wip-installer-2, I choose to rewrite it for multiple reasons: * I found the guile-ncurses approach too low level and think that many bugs in the current installer could be avoided with a higher level library. * As suggested by Ludo[1], using a network manager seems to be a better idea that calling iw, ip and other low level tools. * I prefer relying on a Guile-parted library rather than calling cfdisk and again interfacing with various partioning tools. While a lot of work have been accomplished by John and Danny, fixing the above issues mean rewrite it almost completely anyway. So, I wrote Guile bindings for newt[2], which can be found here[3]. Newt is the library used by Debian installer and the Anaconda installer (RedHat, Centos, ...). I choose to interface with Connman via connmanctl. It would have been better to use DBus but it implies writing Guile-dbus and I did not have the courage. Based on this, I have a first draft for a new installer here[4]. I plan to push it on a wip savannah branch soon. Most of the basic features are implemented and the last missing part it the partioning one (also the bigger ...). I will soon share some iso files to have some feedbacks. Even if it might be too late already, I think that releasing the 1.0 with a graphical installer would be a big plus. Mathieu [1]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-01/msg01255.html [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_(programming_library) [3]: https://gitlab.com/mothacehe/guile-newt [4]: https://github.com/mothacehe/guix/tree/installer