[Bug 279174] POLA violation: Graphical Installer for a natively text UI OS

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=279174

Pierre Pronchery <khorben@defora.org> changed:

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--- Comment #3 from Pierre Pronchery <khorben@defora.org> ---
Hi Alexander, (all)

[I understand that this is not the place for a discussion - we can take it
privately from there - but I think some aspects deserve more clarity]

First, thank you for your interest, and for the praise; much appreciated.

While I totally agree with your evaluation of FreeBSD, I also believe that it
can grow to be more than a text-based Operating System, and that graphical
interfaces can be useful to many less tech-savvy users even while setting up a
server. I have witnessed this myself, and this is also the reason behind
projects like TrueNAS, PC-BSD, GhostBSD, or MidnightBSD for instance.

With this in mind, this new graphical version of the installer does not replace
the existing one. It adds a new possibility, by means of an additional
installation image. It is only available there, and even then it still starts
the text-based installer on the first VT as usual. This actually works as a
failover mechanism if the graphical installer fails to start.

In fact the current design of the graphical installer re-uses the code of the
traditional text-based installer. This is an intentional decision on my part,
which allows both implementations to improve each other in most situations: a
fix in the graphical installer automatically applies to the other one, and vice
versa. Win win :)

Ed wrote a bit too fast, as by now almost every part is ready and pending
review in Phabricator. However overall it is not an easy thing to just approve
and push, as it adds weight to releases (currently 8 GB on amd64), flirts with
what is acceptable in base (e.g., downloading ports to generate an image) and
will probably require documentation updates as well. So this will still take
time and broader approval before making it to a future release.

Knowing this, I took it upon myself to travel to AsiaBSDCon and communicate
about this project at the DevSummit and at the conference, and I also intend to
present it to a broader group of FreeBSD developers next week during BSDCan.

I would like to conclude by mentioning two related initiatives: Alfonso
Siciliano, the author of bsddialog, is working on an additional installation
step which would drop a graphical interface after installation if so desired -
thus fixing the POLA violation - while a GSoC student, Leaf Yen, is working on
extending the installation media for upgrading or repairing existing
installations.

I am very much looking forward to the first official release of such
commercial-grade installation media for FreeBSD :)

Anyhow hoping this clarifies,
-- Pierre Pronchery

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