On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 10:31:59AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
Attilio Fiandrotti wrote:
i would like to know how do you plan to support the gtk frontend for the
future relases of the installer.
Actually the frontend seems to work (it's complete and does what it's
supposed to do), the real problem is that gtk over dfb is still
broken/out of date and the only way to perform graphic instalations is
to use an X server.
DFB developers are working to add dfb support to the upcoming gtk 2.8
relase, and the gdk port is seen to be stable not before the end of the
summer.
What should we do : wait for DFB to be ready and stable before packing
what's needed or simply start shipping an X server inside the cd until
DFB is ready?
Maybe we could pack inside the cdrom only the libraries that are needed
for an app to run using a remote X server: this would save up a lot of
space.
You're right, lack of a way to boot the graphical installer and see how
it fails and what needs to be worked on is really holding it back to the
few of you who know how to put the peices together.
I advise not to wait for upstream updates. Create some udebs of peices
that work now. Build them by hand from binary bits, or use a hack like
build-depending on X and copying the binary into your udeb. It's a
temporary hack, it doesn't have to be pretty, but it has to be easy to
deal with. Make building the image as easy as dropping these udebs into
localudebs and running a build target. This will provide incentives to
the X people to produce a udeb, to me to get the daily builds spitting
out images for the graphical installer, and to everyone to test and
start working on it.
If you wanted an X udeb, you just had to ask. I've asked about this
repeatedly in the past when the gtk frontend was brought up, and have only
been met with silence. I can get working on a udeb for the X.Org -6 release
if you want. Patches also accepted of course.
- David Nusinow