Re: [RFC] Let's get rid of auto-install

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:59:40PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> Or rather, let's integrate the functionality in the preseed udeb but at the 
> same time remove the need for all separate auto-install udebs.
> 
> The first patch is what makes this possible. It modifies main-menu so that 
> it will automagically run components, that were not installable from the 
> start of D-I, when their isinstallable script no longer fails. This means 
> we no longer need the ai-* udebs with their artificial dependencies.

Sounds great -- the ai-chooser thing was always a kludge to
get round that weakness in the way the menu works.  My initial attempts
at delaying the choosers failed precisely because I was guessing wrongly
that isinstallable would get multiple tries.

> The second patch integrates remaining auto-install functionality in the 
> preseed udeb:
> - a startup script [1] now takes care of checking if auto-install is
>   enabled; a lot cleaner than having localechooser do that
> - the url expansion is really an extension of network-preseed and thus
>   integrated in that (for now I've left it as a separate script, but it
>   should probably be integrated in the postinst)

Not sure if this makes any odds, but I was envisaging that all URLs
including file:/// might be usable, so that the differentiation between
network and non-network preseeding might be something that we could drop
at some point.  Also, we need the relative url stuff to be done regardless
of whether the initial preseed file came via http or from /hd-media as
that allows one to copy a bundle of preseed files from a web site onto
a USB stick and still have them work.  Just thought I'd mention that
as background of how I use this stuff, not because I think there's
anything wrong with what you've done (I'll tell you if I manage to find
anything :-)

> - the choosers are enabled again when network-preseed runs
> 
> The third patch updates the isinstallable scripts for localechooser and 
> kbd-chooser.
> 
> The fourth patch removes auto-install and ai-* udebs from all pkg-lists.
> 
> IMO this makes for a much cleaner framework and, most importantly, it gets 
> rid of the strange extra menu items that appeared during auto-installs 
> (and the errors in the syslog because their menu title cannot be found).
> 
> Comments?

Sounds like a good plan to me.  I'll have a play with it and see if I
can come up with anything I don't like.

> 
> Cheers,
> FJP
...