Re: Screen support (was: Next d-i alpha release: late June)
Dear KiBi,
Thanks for your feedback!
On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 4:48 AM, Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org> wrote:
> Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org> (2016-07-04):
>> Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org> (2016-07-04):
>> > Roger Shimizu <rogershimizu@gmail.com> (2016-07-04):
>> > > For the change I mentioned yesterday, I already tested on:
>> > > - armel/kirkwood
>> > > - amd64
>> > > and they're working as expected.
>> > >
>> > > So I just pushed the commit to add screen support.
>> > >
>> > > I hope all ARCHs still (daily) build fine when I get up tomorrow morning.
>> > > If not I'll try to fix or simply remove the screen support for that
>> > > specific ARCH.
>> > >
>> > > This has big impact to UI (added a top bar) and operation (Ctrl-A
>> > > [1-4], previous Alt-F[1-4] is still working though).
>> > > I hope it won't panic anyone.
>> >
>> > I'm surprised to discover that screen support is not opt-in…
>
> So I've just checked: what started as "screen support would be nice to have
> in some particular situation, on an opt-in basis" became "let's use screen
> unconditionally", adding an extra line which means nothing for beginners,
> possibly making dialogs overflow vertically.
>
> I really don't think that's a reasonable default.
Yes, at first I thought screen enabled installer just fit embedded
system such as ARM boards, after posting it to mailing, quite a few
people told me it's good idea and is not specific for embedded system,
but also for x86 server and other high performance server such as
sparc64.
So I think we can make screen as default, for the text based installer.
> Oh and also: this totally breaks the graphical installer!
Sorry to break the gtk installer.
I just push a commit to disable screen on gtk images, hope it fix the
issue, for the short term.
For the long term, I will try to enable screen on gtk images, because
gtk images also can be boot as text installer, by kernel param
"DEBIAN_FRONTEND=newt".
>> In addition to that, please don't forget to include a debian/changelog
>> update with your commits…
>
> The commit message in debian-installer's git repository reads:
> ,---
> | Add screen support in pkg-lists
> |
> | screen-udeb seems to be useful for most cases, except extremely size
> | limited platform, such as armel/orion5x in netboot/network-console.
> `---
>
> which doesn't quite describe what's happening here, which is: screen being
> used by default! I really expect commit messages (and their corresponding
> changelog entries) to describe what they're doing!
I'm sorry that commit log didn't pass the message.
> Summary: While I'm very happy to see new features proposed, it is really
> important that changes leading to such user-visible changes are
> carefully checked, and documented. Of course, no-one can anticipate all
> consequences, but introducing screen at the very beginning of the boot
> sequence could have triggered a thought about the non terminal-based
> installer… the graphical installer is even the default now!
Yes, the gtk installer is default now, so I think it should be OK to
have screen as default for text based installer.
Of course, it still can be changed, since we're on the alpha stage and
can have new things play around, and find the best position it should
be.
Cheers,
--
Roger Shimizu, GMT +2 Cape Town (in DebConf16)
PGP/GPG: 4096R/6C6ACD6417B3ACB1
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