Trying to install current from a memory stick and then a DVD and got a new and strange installer.

[Freddie Cash]

On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Bruce Cran <bruce at cran.org.uk> wrote:

> On 25/07/2011 06:01, Freddie Cash wrote:
>
>> Thank goodness. The worst thing about sysinstall was that it tried to be a
>> Swiss Army knife doing everything, yet not doing any one thing well. It made
>> a royal mess of rc.conf if you tried to use it to configure a system.
>> Usually the first time someone mentions they use it for post-install
>> configuration, the recommendation is to stop doing that! An os installer
>> should do just that: install the os and nothing else.
>>
>
> I tend to disagree with this. For people unfamiliar with FreeBSD using it
> as a systems administration tool can be really useful, at least until they
> understand where all the various configuration files are and how they work.
>  Having recently switched to opensuse from Ubuntu I know I find the YaST
> tool incredibly useful, and probably wouldn't have continued using SuSE if
> it hadn't been there. Its installer mode is one of the better installers
> I've come across, and lets you fine-tune the configuration.
>

The difference is that YaST was designed from the get-go to be both a system
management tool and a software installation tool and a system installation
tool.  Sysinstall was not, and sysinstall used as a post-install management
tool the past couple of years has caused more issues for newbies than it's
"solved".

If nothing else happened to sysinstall but all the post-install crud was
removed from it, it would be improved a thousand-fold.

Since no one has stepped up to fix the issues with the post-install
management facets of sysinstall, it's only natural to remove those bits.

And, since no one wants to create a new TUI management tool, there's no
reason to burden the bsdinstall devs with it.

Let's make an installation tool.  Later, we can worry about a TUI management
tool, if it's really needed.
-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com